


All Fall Down

by raiining



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Even when they're kinda messed up, Get Together, M/M, Phil makes things better, SHIELD agents are awesome, natasha is my hero, pre-Item 47
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-09
Updated: 2012-11-09
Packaged: 2017-11-18 06:36:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 38,968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/557974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raiining/pseuds/raiining
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint has a history of making poor decisions.  He thought he'd gotten better at that.  It turns out, not so much.</p>
<p>Or: the one where Phil is supposed to seduce a target and Clint accidentally gets there first.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All Fall Down

**Author's Note:**

> This one was a bit of a monster, but it was also a helluva lot of fun. All credit for grammar goes to the_wordbutler. Any mistakes still left are mine!
> 
>  
> 
> The biggest warning on this fic is **dubious consent**. All Clint/Coulson is 100% consensual. For additional warnings please see the end notes.
> 
>  
> 
> (Edit: Russian edited by the fantastic Bree! Thank you!!!)

Clint watched from his perch, jaw tense.

It took serious effort not to grind his teeth together. Clint focused on that instead of the best way to run across the rooftop (the gravel was a little loose) and rappel down seven stories (he had a rope tucked against the wall of the building). The security fence would be easy to jump, and then Clint would be in the swanky hotel courtyard instead of staring at it through his scope. It would take him four and a half minutes – tops – to leave his rifle and walk up to the man Phil Coulson was flirting with and break his arm in three places.

Clint locked his jaw and breathed. He kept his finger easy on the trigger and reminded himself that Jamisen had already called him on the teeth grinding thing once. It wasn’t good to go throwing extra noise over the comms, especially since they were so fucked up to begin with. 

He was lucky, really, that Phil had been too busy smiling at the mob henchman to give him shit for it. Jamisen was good, but when Phil Coulson wanted to give someone shit for something he could really dead-pan the disapproval. 

It wasn’t his job to give Clint shit on this mission because Phil wasn’t technically his handler for the op. That great honour went to Jamisen, who wasn’t really a bad guy. Clint had worked with him on occasion. But Phil was his Handler. Capital letters. Full stop.

Except Phil was still recovering from a severe chest wound and the mission required a lead on the ground known to the mark. That lead was Phil. So instead of being safely tucked away in the surveillance van and coordinating from a distance (Clint’s preference) Phil was standing at the courtyard bar surrounded by twenty-six mob grunts and three of the most powerful arms dealers in the North America. 

Clint ground his teeth together and looked away from the courtyard for a moment to glance over the rest of the hotel.

He kept one eye on the street below him and looked over the setup, again. Three of the biggest underground weapon runners were here already. Intel suggested that their mark, one Richard Hambly, had invited them each personally. None of them liked or trusted one another, so in addition to the mix of usual guests and their own undercover agents, the hotel was peppered with poorly-disguised bodyguards and regular security staff. 

Naruko’s men preferred the dark cloth and thin ties Clint would always associate with the Triads after that one mission in Malaysia. Michelmas had the classic big brutes in brown jackets. And Father Roni liked his men to at least _appear_ as if they were blending in, which meant oversized suits and concealed weapons.

Phil, in a tailored suit with sharper lines than he usually went for, blended in to the mobster scene perfectly. Which was why Fury had pulled him from physiotherapy, of course. 

And because Phil was supposed to seduce Hambly. 

Clint ground his teeth together again.

“Hawkeye, I swear to God -”

Jamisen sounded exasperated. Clint lifted one hand from his rifle to tap his comm once in apology. On the floor, Natasha lifted one shoulder in an elegant shrug. She lifted her eyes to Clint’s position and smirked a little.

“Yeah, yeah,” Clint muttered, knowing Natasha would hear him. She smiled and turned back to her mark.

Clint settled back around his rifle scope and watched her for a moment. It was calming. Like Phil, Nat was doing well here. She was wearing a tight-fitting dress and had her hair coiled elegantly over one milky-white shoulder. She was standing only a few feet away from Phil, making small talk with the number two on S.H.I.E.L.D.’s list of People We’d Really Like You to Shoot (But Not Until We Tell You To), Barton. 

Graceful and deadly, she could kill half the people in this room before the other half got their guns out. And all these assholes could see was a pretty piece of ass in a red dress. 

Which was the point, of course. Natasha had been picked for this mission because she knew how to move in this world, how to blend.

Like Phil.

Unlike Clint.

Because while the Red Room had trained Natasha for all kinds of scenarios and Phil had three decades of experience blending into any enviornment, Clint had eight years in the circus and seven as a merc. He owned three pairs of jeans, twelve t-shirts and two pairs of running shoes. Every other piece of clothing he had came from S.H.I.E.L.D. They hadn’t given him a suit.

They’d tried, once. He was pretty sure there was now a large red stamp on his folder that said “ _excellent counter-espionage agent for gutter scum, but do not attempt to make pretty_ “ or something to that effect.

At the time Clint had been grateful to never have to wear the thing again. He’d hated trying to fake his way through a world he had never and could never belong to. But now, switching his attention from Natasha back to Phil and seeing Phil actually _grab some guy’s elbow_ Clint would gladly take the suit.

Hell, he would take Jamisen’s if it would get him down there.

Which was ridiculous. Clint was well aware that he had been actively avoiding Coulson since the man had woken up in medical. He had been frozen – full on, completely paralyzed – by the sight of Phil walking down the corridors in headquarters two weeks ago. Only a last minute dive into the ventilation shafts had saved him from having to actually _speak_ to his Handler face-to-face. 

Clint wasn’t ready for that. Instead he spent most of his time at Stark Tower. Tony was making not-very-subtle noises about renovations, and kept e-mailing Clint with ideas for an archery range. 

It had been as good an excuse as any to get away for a couple of hours. Clint had been making a lot of those, lately. At least until Fury had called him back and told him to be in the conference room for an op briefing at 0700. 

Clint still didn’t know what Fury had been thinking. It had barely been four weeks since the attack on New York. Medical was still breaking out the champagne and patting itself on the back for the miracle blend of super-soldier formula plus gamma radiation plus nanotech that had managed to save Phil and a half-dozen other agents’ lives. The Avengers were still on leave and Clint hadn’t been anywhere close to being released onto active duty because of Loki. 

But apparently HYDRA had gotten hold of some of the Chitauri weapons lost in the streets of New York and were now negotiating the distribution rights. In this part of the world that meant working through Richard Hambly, a mob boss billionaire S.H.I.E.L.D. had left alone for the past five years to make way for exactly this type of operation. 

Word around the water cooler was the A.T.F. had taken some serious convincing. Fortunately for S.H.I.E.L.D. Fury could be pretty fucking serious. 

S.H.I.E.L.D. knew Hambly and how he operated. The man was charismatic, ambitious and utterly ruthless. He was also openly gay and apparently had a type – and his type was Phil Coulson.

Clint couldn’t really blame him.

Coulson had, much to Clint’s sputtering surprise, known this for quite some time. Apparently he had already met the man twice in the guise of Peter Camp, a quiet and competent whitewash operator from Manhattan who had already done some – very profitable – business with Hambly on the side. “Peter” had been invited to Hambly’s little Evil Mob Bosses of America convention here in the Rockies to help Hambly laundry the weapons as they spread from Hambly and HYDRA through the North American hemisphere.

For the chance to nail HYDRA’s weapons distribution network and secure the Chitauri guns, Fury had pulled Phil off physiotherapy, Nat back from Cambodia, and Clint from the No-Fly List.

He’d gone from “you’ll get your bow back in approximately _never_ “ to “here Barton go shoot some people” in about forty-five minutes.

It had been a little jarring.

Clint had escaped from the briefing room and barely scrapped together six hours on the range before he’d been packed up and in the air. It hadn’t been enough to settle his nerves, but it had made him confident in his ability to hit within 98.6% of his usual accuracy while his hands were shaking.

If he was honest with himself, which he avoided on general principle, the last time he’d been this unsure around the butt of a rifle he’d been hung over, exhausted, and so far down the path of despair it had taken Phil Coulson and a bullet wound to make him realize he didn’t have to do it alone any more.

Not the memory he wanted to focus on while Coulson stood by a mahogany bar and _smiled_ at people.

In desperation Clint scanned over the courtyard of people, watching the gun-runners in their fancy suits and the security detail in their less-fancy suits. Clint hated that he knew a half-Windsor from a Pratt knot and blamed Phil for it completely.

The security guys were standing around their employers, trying to appear casual and failing at it completely. These situations always sucked for the hired help. Clint had done this dance enough times during his merc days that he could appreciate the disgruntled looks the various goons were throwing at each other. 

That was, except for two guys in the east corner.

Clint focused on the back east side. There was a large man in an ill-fitting black suit, definitely a goon of some sort, and he was looking across the room at another man in an equally baggy jacket. Clint watched as the first man nodded towards something and Clint followed his gaze. He was looking away from the bar, in the opposite direction of Nat and Phil, towards the waiters’ exit in the back and what --

Oh, shit.

“We have activity on Woo,” Clint said over his comm. His hands went, thankfully steady, to his gun as his adrenalin ramped up. Over the comms he could hear a scramble as the other agents on surveillance re-focused their attention from the main targets to their third agent on the ground.

“What activity, Hawkeye? I don’t see – wait, I got it. Two men, six foot two and six foot three, both in black suits with terrible ties, moving on Woo. I think they’re Father Roni’s men.”

Clint watched as Woo quietly scanned his exits. He was dressed as a waiter and had spent the majority of the after-dinner mingle fest handing out drinks and plates of fancy desserts. Clint mentally reviewed what he knew of the man – a good agent, several years of field experience, and senior enough to be on the ground with Coulson and Natasha.

Jamisen’s voice came over the comm “Woo, report. What’s your situation?”

Clint didn’t have access to Woo’s channel. It would have been too distracting to have ears on “more champagne, sir?” every thirty seconds, but Jamisen did.

“He’s been made. He can’t get out without causing a scene and blowing the op. We need an extraction. Who’s down by the waiters’ exit?”

Clint cased the place quickly. Nat was in play, talking with Father Roni himself. Phil was still at the bar talking to Swanson, Hambly’s senior man on the ground. Clint could see he’d gone tense in the set of his shoulders, but he doubted his mark had noticed a difference.

There were other agents outside, but most were at the front of the hotel. If Roni’s guys were good, and intel suggested they were, Woo didn’t have that kind of time.

“I can get to him,” Clint said, calculating the jump. He knew the steps he’d have to take to make it, the corner where he’d stashed his line. It was basically the same trajectory he’d mapped out five times already, estimating how long it would take him to get across the roof and down to Phil.

Jamisen paused, considering, but Clint knew he would come to the same decision. They needed a sniper, but there was back up for that, and no one else could get there fast enough without breaking cover.

“Go,” Jamisen said, and Clint went. He dropped his rifle and jumped across to the next building, moving like one of his arrows, steady and sure. In his ear, he heard Jamisen getting his replacement into position, Agent Watson. She was good – not as good as he was, but then no one was.

The line was exactly where he left it, hanging almost invisible in the shadows beside the building one over from his rifle. He was down and across the street before Goons 1 and 2 could force Woo across the room towards the waiters’ exit. By the time they had him alone, Clint had shimmied around the back of the hotel, darted in through the loading door, and sprinted through the back hallways towards the hotel courtyard.

He was in the space behind the waiters’ exit, one door away from his targets, when he heard Jamisen’s voice in his ear.

“Hawkeye – wait.”

Clint breathed in and out carefully and paused, listening to the closed door. He couldn’t quite make out the words, but he knew that Woo had definitely been made. One of the Goons was telling him ... something ... to keep his hands at his sides, maybe?

“They’re going to escort him through the door. Hawkeye, trail them. Woo thinks they’re going to bring him to the car for questioning. If that’s true, we’ll take them and the driver once their away from the hotel and get the location of Roni’s base. There’s a chance that’s where the weapons are stashed and we can blow this popsicle stand.”

“Roger,” Clint replied, evening out his breathing and pushing away from the wall. He would do anything he could to get this op over and done with as soon as possible. He strolled to the back of the hallway and ducked unobtrusively around the back corridor, keeping one eye on the door. “And if they don’t head to the car?”

“Use your best judgement,” Jamisen said, which was one of the reasons Clint could stand him as a handler, when he couldn’t have Phil. “If they’re going to take him out, don’t let them. If you can get useful information out the situation, do it.”

“Understood,” Clint agreed, just as the door opened and one of the Goons stepped out. Woo was right behind him, obviously being herded down the corridor. Clint could tell by the bulge in Goon 2’s jacket that he had a gun trained carefully on their agent.

“Following,” Clint said under his breath, watching as the trio made their way down the hallway. He stepped out from behind the corridor before they were out of sight and followed. 

Keeping one eye on his targets Clint quickly checked his black S.H.I.E.L.D. issue jacket for smokes. He found one and pulled the package out. Clint hadn’t smoked seriously in years, not since Phil had brought him in and given him something to live for. But smoking made an excellent reason to be found standing around in dark and shadowed places. Clint always kept one half-empty and one completely empty package on him when in the field.

Asking for a smoke was a great way to get close enough to someone to stab them in the kidneys.

Clint followed the trio through the back hallways of the hotel, then around to the brightly-lit entranceway. He made sure Watson had her eye on their man before he dipped out a service exit and ran around to the front of the hotel, grabbing a smoke from his pack as he went. By the time the trio emerged from the front door of the hotel, Clint was resting his back against one of the few pillars holding up the idling zone, close enough to move quickly if someone flinched and moved on Woo.

A long white Lincoln pulled up in front of the hotel just as the Goons herded Woo outside, windows tinted but with at least two people in the car. The side door opened and Woo, obviously under orders, stepped in. Goon 2 followed him in but Goon 1 stepped back. The man watched as the car drove away, keeping an eye on the scenery. His eyes flickered over the front entrance and Clint felt them rest on him for a moment.

He didn’t bother looking at the enforcer. He focused instead on lounging against the pillar and making love to his cigarette. It actually tasted fantastically good. It had been months since his last infiltration op, long, _long_ before Thor and New Mexico and the shitstorm that had hit there. He wasn’t going to have another smoke for weeks, either, and he didn’t want to restart the habit, so he let himself enjoy this cigarette. He didn’t put on a show, didn’t want to draw attention to himself, but he knew relaxed smoking would fit in better with the dark jeans and black jacket look he was currently sporting.

He obviously passed inspection, because after a moment Goon 1 turned and walked back into the hotel. Clint stayed where he was and listened to Jamisen coordinate the op.

“Good job, Hawkeye. The car is away. Headed west. No, wait – they’re circling around to an empty lot. We can’t risk it. Take the car.”

Clint didn’t have ears on the Beta team, but from the silence on Jamisen’s end everything seemed to be going well. Barely ninety seconds later Jamisen’s voice was back. “Agent secure.”

Clint breathed a quiet sigh of relief. He liked Woo. He had been one of the few guys who treated Clint the same after Loki, never flinching when he walked by him on the Helicarrier. He was glad the kid was okay.

Woo was off the op, though, and there’d be fallout with Roni’s people. They’d know someone was watching them now. But Jamisen had plans in place for this. He was going to make it look as if one of the other players, Hambly himself maybe, had been holding Woo’s leash.

Clint dragged on the end of his cigarette, savouring the taste. He was going to have to get up in a moment, taper down the adrenalin rush and go back to his perch. Take his rifle back from Watson and go back to watching Phil. Fuck.

Before he could stand up properly though, another pair of headlights trailed over him. Clint glanced casually over his shoulder as a white limo turned off the street pulled to the hotel.

Over his comm, Jamisen hissed. “Hawkeye, Hawkeye, heads up. That may be Hambly. Stay in character.”

Clint didn’t bother nodding, just took another drag on his cigarette. He was blended in enough that it was possible the weapons-runner wouldn’t even see him, not if he was rushing to get to his big Who Wants to Sell My Alien Weapons? party.

The driver-side door opened and a large man in a well-fitting suit stepped out. Security, Clint decided, watching the way the man moved, but high-end muscle. He crossed around the front of the car and opened the door for his boss. Hambly himself stepped out of the limo, and Clint could appreciate why the man had done so well for himself.

He looked ... put together. Better than in the surveillance photographs they had memorized at the briefing. Well cut, taller than Clint, but not looming. He had a pleasant, well weathered face that still managed to be ruggedly handsome, and he carried himself like a confident man. He obviously had charisma in spades to have risen to the position he had, but Clint could see the edge of ruthlessness underneath the tailored white suit jacket.

It was in the way he moved, the pace of his eyes as he scanned his surroundings. Clint felt the warning in his hind-brain, knew it as the adrenalin flooded his system and his heart rate kicked up. There would be no hiding from this man. 

But he wasn’t a god. He was just a man. 

Clint knew how to deal with men.

Instead of turning to run, Clint consciously relaxed his limbs. He went almost boneless against the pillar and took a long, obvious draw on his almost-finished cigarette.

Clint felt the moment Hambly looked over at him. His gaze was heavy, weighted. Clint glanced over and met those eyes. The gun-runner’s face was shadowed by the angle of the lights and Clint felt like a slice of beef being weighed for its hide.

It wasn’t a pleasant feeling, but it was one Clint was used to. 

The memory of it, hot and heavy, was almost enough to send Clint into a tailspin. He was lucky his heart was pounding hard enough to keep his adrenalin spiking, or he was almost afraid his hands would start shaking around the butt of his cigarette. 

Instead of showing how nervous he suddenly felt, how much he really fucking wanted to turn and run away from this man, Clint steadied himself and locked eyes with the target. He let a small smirk flash onto his face. 

It was his patented _Like what you see?_ look, and he’d used it to good effectiveness on more than one occasion

Most of those occasions had been years ago, back when he’d been a merc for hire. Clint hadn’t had back-up then, and he hadn’t had friends. Instead he’d had a handful of hard-learned lessons about what you had to do if you wanted to limp away from a situation. 

And apparently he’d learned some lessons too well, because instead of turning and walking away, knowing this wasn’t then – that _he_ wasn’t then – Clint quirked one eyebrow a little. 

People were less likely to stab you when they wanted to fuck you, and Clint had been stabbed enough, thank you very much. 

Jamisen was hissing in his ear, “What are you doing, Hawkeye?”

Clint didn’t bother responding, couldn’t have even if he wanted to, not with the hungry way Hambly was now staring at him. The gun-runner kept his eyes on Clint but turned his head slightly, catching the attention of his driver. The big man leaned down, his head half a foot higher than the already six-foot tall Hambly, and listened carefully to a set of instructions. Then he straightened, and Hambly turned back to Clint. After a moment, the gun-runner stalked over to him.

Clint smirked a little wider, sucking on the last of his cigarette, making the action dirtier than it needed to be. Hambly stared at him, his eyes dark even in the dim light.

“Hello, gorgeous,” he said, coming to a stop a little closer to Clint that was comfortable.

Clint angled his head up to look at the man, letting his smile turn suggestive. He had a knife at his back and one at his boot, and he could get to either in the space it would take Hambly to realize what was happening. The gun-runner would be dead before he could do anything about it.

But that wasn’t what this mission was about. This wasn’t an assassination. They needed the weapons location, needed the guns themselves, and if Hambly wasn’t doing anything too insane they wanted him alive to take the fall. If everything went perfectly – which happened, if rarely – HYDRA wouldn’t even know S.H.I.E.L.D. had been involved. 

So Clint took a last drag on his cigarette, dropped the butt, and raised his hands to tuck them behind his head. He leaned back into the pillar and shifted his hips. 

“Usually I let someone buy me a drink before we get to pet names.”

Hambly smiled at him hungrily, his eyes flickering up and down Clint’s body. It made Clint’s skin itch, but he didn’t move away.

“Let me buy you a drink then, and we’ll see where things go from there.”

Jamisen was in his ear, quiet. Hambly, looming six inches in front of Clint, couldn’t hear the handler.

“Clint, you’re doing well but do _not_ engage him tonight. The party inside is shifting to the back room, and Coulson and Romanov are in position. If this guy is as into you as he looks, he’s going to cut the meeting short and have drinks with you instead. That is not what we want out of tonight. Get him to meet with you tomorrow.”

Clint took the information in, appreciating how Jamisen spent the time to explain himself, even if he knew the man got docked for it by the stuffier agents. It helped Clint plan his strategy, to know the playing field.

Clint made his eyes travel across Hambly’s chest before focusing back on his face with a hint of resignation in his expression.

“Can’t. Working tonight. My boss is a real hard-ass.”

Hambly looked like he was going to argue, so Clint shrugged. “Free tomorrow though, if you’re still interested.”

Hambly smiled again. “Tomorrow works.” He inclined his head at the hotel. “Meet me here? What time do you get off?”

Clint grinned back at him, listening to Jamisen in his ear. “Eight. Not quite late enough for drinks. I could meet you at ten?”

Hambly shook his head, his eyes hungry. “Why don’t you let me buy you dinner first, and we’ll see what that gets me.”

Clint forced himself to laugh, low. Fuck, his skin was crawling. “Someone’s confident.”

Hambly rocked back a little onto his heels. “I’m used to getting what I want.”

Clint wanted to blanch at that, knowing full well what methods this dick-face used to “get” what he wanted, but he kept the reaction from his face. “Really? Well I’m not, so that’s an interesting perspective.”

Hambly chuckled. He leaned in again. “Tomorrow then. I’ll meet you here, eight o’clock.”

“It’s a date,” Clint winked.

The gun-runner gave him one last lingering, hungry glance and turned away. Behind him, his driver stepped away from the limo and followed, obviously used to his boss’s ways. One of the valet’s from the hotel took the keys the driver offered and unobtrusively got into the limo, moving it towards the back of the hotel.

Clint knew the valet was one of theirs, Agent Jones if he guessed right, though he hadn’t exactly been paying attention. Instead he forced himself to watch Hambly leave, letting his gaze travel to the man’s - admittedly fine - ass in case he turned around.

He didn’t, and Clint rested against the pillar for another thirty-five seconds before turning and walking down to the bus stop one block away from the hotel. He walked casually, never looking right or left, and ignored the way his skin itched and itched, the feeling rising until even the scrape of his clothes against his arms felt painful. He forced himself to ignore the way he felt suddenly, incredibly dirty, and kept his pace even. He couldn’t act suspicious. No matter how much he wanted to find a shower, how badly he needed to rub his hands until the stench of the cigarette came off, he needed to stay in character until he could meet up with Jamisen.

Fuck. Jamisen had been right, what the hell had he been thinking? If only he could walk back to the hotel, pick up his rifle, and forget he had ever volunteered to jump down and help Woo.

Of course, if he were to suddenly develop time-bending mutant powers, there were a few other things he wanted to fix first.

_Fuck._

Now Nat and Phil were stuck with Watson, who was good, very good - but she wasn’t him. If something went wrong in that meeting, if Phil or Nat got made, Clint wouldn’t be able to help them. 

And now he had a date with a mark, which - Clint stuffed his hands in his jacket pockets, trying to hide how badly they were shaking.

He didn’t want to do this. Not again. Not ever.

He felt so dirty. 

Clint had to stifle a sudden, horrible urge to run. Not just away from the hotel, but from everything. To drop the op and go, get his emergency bag from where he’d stashed it on the rooftop and vanish before Hambly and S.H.I.E.L.D. could say or do anything about it. He could be halfway around the world by this time tomorrow, and he wouldn’t have to deal with this shit.

And then four months from now, six months from now, where would he be? Back in the same position, probably, taking jobs for hire because it was the only way he knew how to live. Only he’d be without any kind of backup again. What he’d done tonight would probably become his Tuesday night. 

And that was if Nat let him go, which, he had to admit to himself, wasn’t very likely.

Coulson might not let him go, either. 

Maybe.

He might be pissed off enough at Clint to consider it. 

Clint kicked at the sidewalk as he walked away from the hotel. Who was he kidding? He wasn’t going to abandon Phil or Nat. Not now and not ever. Clint would probably have ended up hanging around S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters if he’d taken off, anyway. He had that small matter of a ridiculous crush on his handler, after all.

Okay, so he was sticking around. Clint hunched his shoulders as he walked. He was going to have to deal with this, then. He knew from experience that analyzing his behaviour post mission wouldn’t get rid of the filthy feeling on his skin, but it was important for him to understand his own reactions.

Clint trusted his instincts, but he had to know where those instincts came from. 

He needed to know that having Loki in his brain had fucked him up a little more than he’d originally figured. Maybe Clint should have expected this. He’d cobbled together what was basically a mercenary force for Loki, after all. It made sense that doing that would have stirred up some old memories. Clint hadn’t slept with any of the mercs he’d found for the job, but that was only because he hadn’t needed too. He’d have rolled over and begged for Loki himself if the god had asked him to. He could only be thankful now that he hadn’t.

What he _had_ done was a lot worse. He’d given away S.H.I.E.L.D. secrets, killed people he knew, stormed the Helicarrier and tried to force it from the sky. He’d almost succeeded, too, and Clint knew the world would look very different today if he had. 

So it made sense that he’d been feeling a little shaky. This was his first op for S.H.I.E.L.D. since the attack on New York, after all. He’d been pretty high on adrenalin and vengeance on that op, not really thinking about what he was doing. Plus he hadn’t really trusted any of the team to have his back in that fight, except for Natasha. He’d spent most of it up high.

It made sense that once he was on the ground, and feeling trapped, Clint would revert to the instincts that kept him alive. Clint followed those instincts, and they told him he had better make nice with Hambly or get stabbed. And make nice, according to Clint’s experience, meant more than a smile.

So he was in play, now. He wouldn’t be up high, where he was most comfortable, but maybe there’d be recompense. Clint slowed as he approached the bus stop, working it out in his head, and checked his pockets for change.

The number 42 bus rolled up and Clint got in, threw his fare into the cache and walked to the back of the bus. He’d memorized the schedules and the layout of the city. He sank down into one of the plastic chairs at the back of the bus and tipped sideways to rest his temple against the cool glass. He could see the row of seats across him in the reflection from the window, and it made something inside of him relax.

Being on the ground meant having to watch your back. But on this op it also meant he’d be closer to the action. Far enough away to see clearly, maybe, but close enough to get up and personal to anyone who dared lay a finger on his Handler or his partner.

Clint pulled the cord seven minutes later, recognizing this part of town. He got off the bus two blocks away from the hotel Jamisen and Phil had designated as their field office.

Clint lost himself in a patch of shadow and waited, making sure no one was following him, then did a bit of rooftop running to be sure. He climbed into the hotel his usual way, through the roof entrance, opening the door with the lock-picking kit he kept in his ankle-sheath.

Making his way down to room 3116, Clint took a few more deep breaths. Okay. So he knew why he had reacted the way he had, and Nat would get it, too. That just left the rest of the Alpha team for him to deal with. And if he was going to pull this off, he had to do something about the feeling of dirt on his skin. There was no way he’d sleep tonight with the feel of Hambly’s hungry eyes on him, the taste of the cigarette in his mouth. 

Agent Kumar looked up when Clint opened the hotel room door after giving the “all clear” knock. She put her gun down and waved at him distractedly as she went back to her screens. Clint walked up behind her to peer over her shoulder. She didn’t flinch, which he appreciated.

Everyone was still at the op. He could see Jamisen in the van and knew Watson was on the roof. Phil was in the meeting at the back of the hotel and Nat had been left in the courtyard. There was a security camera they had hacked into – the video was fuzzy but not too bad – and Clint could see her flirting with some of the lower echelons who’d also been left out of the main meeting.

There were no cameras inside the board room. They had discussed smuggling in their own, but Phil hadn’t thought it worth the risk. The security had been tight, and there was the weird energy signature they’d identified earlier. It was still in effect, stronger in the meeting room than the courtyard. Phil’s comm was still glitchy, worse than it had been, and Clint figured they’d probably have to replace it tonight.

Besides the ear piece, Phil was wearing a set of cuff links that remote transmitted everything said in the room. It flickered in and out occasionally, like his ear mic, which Clint wasn’t happy about. But enough got through that there were no major losses of contact. He knew Stark was already doing what he could with the data they were transmitting him, seeing if he could clear up the signal a bit. But it was hard for even a genius to work against unknown tech.

Clint sat with Kumar for a while and listened, but when it became clear that everyone was comparing operation dick sizes – politely – he headed to the shower.

He took his watch off before he got in and set it on the counter with the timer on. If he didn’t, he might not come out again for hours, and then even Kumar would know something was wrong.

Clint stripped as dispassionately as he could. He kept his eyes focused forward and folded his clothes on the toliet seat when he was done. Then he turned on the shower as hot as it would go, and let the steam build up before he stepped in.

It took real effort, but Clint stuck to the six minute timer. He scrubbed every inch of his body, paying particular attention to his face, which, thanks to the eyebrow and the smirking, felt the dirtiest. He rubbed at his hands until the skin turned red, and forced himself to stop when digging more would draw blood. 

When the timer went off, he made himself stop and turn off the shower. Clint stood in the cooling tub letting every drip of water fall off him, focusing on watching it swirl into the drain instead of scrubbing himself ten more times like he wanted to.

He was as pink as the fresh-cooked crabs Tony had ordered when they went to that seafood restaurant that one time last week, and he didn’t feel much better. But he was clean, at least physically, and he dried himself off with the hotel towel. His fingers itched to burn it, but he knew he couldn’t, not here. This wasn’t his apartment with a convenient dumpster. He settled for throwing it under the counter and resolving never to look at it again.

He wrapped a clean sheet around his middle and remembered the distance to the closest bedroom. Jamisen had agreed the op was extensive enough to rate them a mini suite, with one central area and a shared bathroom, but two separate bedrooms. Since someone would be on surveillance 24-7, they needed the walls or no one would get enough sleep.

Clint wrapped the towel around himself, careful to look more casual than he felt, and strode out in the common area. He crossed the distance to the room he shared with the Alpha team with his head up. Kumar didn’t even look over once.

Clint dressed quickly in a pair of loose slacks and a long shirt. He threw a t-shirt over top and then went back into the common area. He turned on the kettle and made himself a package of hot chocolate, focusing on appearing relaxed, and added extra milk to the hot water. He offered Kumar a cup and made a second when she accepted.

It took another half an hour, but the meeting back Hambly’s hotel finally broke up. From what Clint had been able to overhear, nothing important had happened tonight. Mostly there had been introductions and small conversations that Phil had used to further entrench himself in their world. It looked like he was doing well. 

Meanwhile the Beta team was coordinating with Jamisen and beginning interrogations of the thugs they’d picked up. They were doing it in character, too, to cement the idea that Hambly had been behind the surveillance. Clint wasn’t sure how Agent Woo got made, but he hoped they’d have that information soon.

The only interesting bit came at Phil’s end, when Father Roni obviously got a text message and just as obviously left in a hurry after. They couldn’t guess yet if he would follow Jamisen’s planted suggestions and blame Hambly for Goon 1 and 2’s capture, but they should know by tomorrow night.

Everyone was using pre-paid cell phones and they hadn’t been able to get a bug into anyone’s hotel room. Phil had suspected, back at their original briefing, that HYDRA – through Hambly – had volunteered additional counter-intelligence security. That hunch seemed to have paid off. In addition to the booked conference room, that strange energy field had been detected inside each of the Big Three’s suites. No matter how they tried, every bug they stashed fried within minutes.

Stark had been impressed with the tech for about thirty seconds, before he’d cursed over their wireless connection and gotten pissed off. It seemed smaller radio signals lasted longer, but the hour long meeting had strained Phil’s comm extensively. They’d have to figure out a way to rotate comms, bringing new ones online as the older ones failed.

Which was another reason why Fury had pulled all their best back for this op. It wasn’t going to be easy.

After the meeting ended, a few of the participants hung around to have drinks. Phil and Nat had been flirting with people all night and couldn’t back out, and there might be good intel to secure. They stayed in character for another forty-five minutes, then gradually, individually, called it a night. Watson remained on the scene to watch Jones. 

Jamisen, Nat, and Phil didn’t have to take the bus, but it was still late by the time they arrived back at the hotel room. Clint looked up from the couch when they came in. 

He had spent the last forty minutes trying to resist the urge to run into one of the bedrooms, close the door, and pretend to be asleep. Phil would never go for it, and Nat would just walk up and punch him anyway.

She walked up to him and punched him now, but at least he could see it coming.

“Idiot,” she said, hitting him even as he turned his shoulder in to the blow. She flicked off her high heeled shoes, ignoring his plantive “Ow!” and tucking herself next to him on the couch. “What were you thinking?”

Okay, that was unfair. Mostly because he _hadn’t_ been thinking at the time, and Nat knew it.

“Uh, how about ‘wrong place, wrong time, please don’t shoot me Mr. Gun-runner, sir?’“ Clint scowled at her, “It wasn’t exactly like I planned this, Nat.”

Natasha shook her head. She was frowning, and Clint felt a pang as he realized she was really concerned about him. “This is not going to end well.”

No, it really wasn’t, but Clint forced himself to smile. “It’s fine.” The lie sat heavy on his shoulders. Clint rolled them, then stood up from the couch. He needed to move. He paced to the window, peaked outside for a moment, and then paced back. Clint glanced over at Jamisen, hating how unsure about this he felt, and then flicked a glance at his handler.

Phil was still standing by the door. He hadn’t moved since entering the room, and he waited at Jamisen’s right shoulder. He was wearing his patented Calm Agent Under Pressure expression, and Clint’s glance skittered away again. 

That was the face Phil wore when someone fucked up, and Clint couldn’t look at it now.

“So what’s the score?” he asked instead, pacing back to the window again. 

Jamisen sighed and shuffled forward, sinking into one of the two uncomfortable single-person chairs in the room. “Phil and I were discussing that on our way over,” the lead agent said. “We’ve agreed we’ll just have to roll with it. The plan had been for Phil to get close to Hambly and manufacture a chance to snoop through his hotel room, since our bugs are for shit. We also need to plant a bug on Hambly, for as long as it’ll last, to lead us to the weapons cache.”

He looked over at Clint, his gaze steady despite the weary sigh. “That’s your job now. Agents Coulson and Romanov will proceed with the pre-arranged Plan B, which is to continue on at the negotiations and try to win the right to whitewash some of the weapons. We can backtrack supply from there, but it will take longer. Any edge you can give us will save a lot of time, Barton.”

Clint nodded. He knew this from the briefing, only then it had been Coulson doing the double-duty of Kiss and Tell. “Understood.”

Jamisen looked over at Kumar, who nodded and started pulling up some new files on her computer. Clint looked over and saw his face on several pieces of local identification. He was impressed, she must have started while he was in the shower.

“We’ve got a basic background done for you,” Jamisen nodded at the screen. “You’re going to be Cody Brinton, age 38, bartender. You’ve been working at the hotel for six months, doing the a.m. valet service and the afternoon and evening bartending shifts. Jones is going to be sick for the next few days and you’re going to take over his hours. No one should be too suspicious, there’s been lots of shake-up as people were moved around for this conference. It seems like every one of these assholes has someone on the staff.” Jamisen grinned, “Including us, of course.”

“Of course,” Clint echoed, rolling his eyes.

“We’re hoping that with the cover story - all totally supportable by tomorrow morning - Hambly won’t suspect you too much. He has a reputation for doing things fast and dirty, anyway.”

“Right,” Clint agreed, nervous again. Fast and dirty. _Great_.

“We’ll get you a shift on valet duty in the morning instead of Jones, and then put you at the bar tomorrow afternoon. That’ll help with surveillance since these comms are crapping out so bad, and we’ll give you a few extras you can pass around to Agents Coulson and Romanov. Then you can meet Hambly as arranged at eight. Make sure you save a few of the extra comms for yourself – we’re going to want to have ears on you at all times.”

“Sure,” Clint said, automatically, even as he flushed and stopping his pacing, edging toward the window at the back of the room. 

Fuck. Yeah, that was what he really wanted. His team with ears on him at all times while he met with Hambly tomorrow night. Nat was right, this was going to end badly. Because he had already classified Hambly as Supremely Fucking Dangerous and was probably going to spend the entire date fighting with himself not to get on his knees and make things easier. And that was before he would probably _have_ to get on his knees, anyway, since they needed a tracker on Hambly. Hambly had already made it abundantely clear what things he wanted Clint to put on his body. 

And he was going to do this knowing Phil was listening to every word he said. 

This was going to be worse than Milan, and Milan had sucked. 

“Now all we need,” Jamisen went on, seemingly oblvious to Clint’s shame, “is your Get Out signal.”

Clint looked up, confused. “My what?”

Jamisen stared at him. “Your Get Out signal.”

Clint didn’t want to look like an idiot and ask the same question twice, but he had no fucking idea what Jamisen was talking about. Standing by the door, Phil looked like his Agent Mask was cracking. Clint darted his eyes away, because underneath his usual bland expression Phil was looking fucking pissed.

Nat hit him again. It was more a gentle slap upside the head than a punch, but it still stung. He hadn’t even seen her move from the couch.

The slap gave him an excuse to rub the back of his head and scowl at her, though, avoiding the gaze of everyone else in the room. “What the hell was that for?”

“For being a dumbass,” she said, patiently. “A Get Out signal is the thing you say on the comm that means I need to call you and tell you that your sister has just been in a car accident, or your mother had a heart attack, or whatever you need me to say that lets you escape your date with Hambly intact.”

Clint stared at her. He was vaguely aware of Jamisen and Kumar trading glances, and Phil looking like he was going to roast someone’s hide with the power of his glare. Probably Clint’s.

“Oh,” Clint said. He fumbled for something to say, “That’s a ... a standard S.H.I.E.L.D. thing, then?”

Nat just looked at him. Her mask was better than Phil’s, but he knew her too well. “Yes.”

“Right,” Clint said, nodding to himself. He could feel his flush deepening, crawling up his neck. Of course S.H.I.E.L.D. had a Get Out signal. It made complete sense. And if he had taken the ten seconds to ask about it, maybe he wouldn’t have had to -

Fuck. Okay. Still in company. _Ride it out, Barton. Ride it out._

“Right,” Clint said again, taking in a breath. “Okay. So, um, my Get Out signal will be ...” his mind blanked. He looked at Nat. “Um, something said in the moment, I guess? Like ...”

Nat took pity on him. “How about ‘that sounds like fun’? I use that one a lot.”

Clint nodded. “Yeah, that sounds good, actually. Easy to say in - “ he blushed again, “ - in the moment.”

He glanced quickly around the room. Kumar was back to staring at her computers and Jamisen looked like the conversation was over. 

Phil was still glowering at him. 

Clint started moving again. “Okay, good planning. Good team effort. I’m gonna hit the showers, so - “

Kumar, the little snitch, blabbed on him. “But you’ve already had a shower,” she said, confused.

Clint resisted the urge to kill her. “Which is totally code for, “go hang out on the roof for a while”,” he amended, changing the direction of his steps from the bathroom to the front door. He pulled up short, though, when he realized Phil still hadn’t moved.

Phil stared at him. Clint tried to reach for a cocky smile and ended up staring at his shoes because, crap. He was totally screwed here.

Phil took a breath in, then stepped to the side. Before he could say anything, Clint escaped.

 

~ ~ ~

 

He had been on the roof for about half an hour before Coulson came to find him. Clint had found his favourite patch of darkness by then. He had one for every watch of the night. This particular corner behind the ventilation equipment was ideal for now, though he’d have to move in a few hours when the sky began to lighten. 

He heard Coulson climb onto the roof and recognized the pattern of his steps. Heavier than Natasha’s, and more confident than Jamisen’s. He listened as Phil paused and scanned the rooftop.

Clint didn’t make any noise, but there weren’t too many places to hide up here. 

He rested his back against the ventilation unit and stared at the sky as he listened to Phil walk closer. It was difficult to see many stars with the light pollution from the city, but Clint could make out a few of his favourites constellations. 

Cancer, who carries his house on his back – that had been one of Barney’s. Clint liked the Archer, for obvious reasons, but he couldn’t make out all of him tonight.

“It was the Weston mission in Milan, wasn’t it?”

It wasn’t really a question. Clint tensed. Of course Phil would fucking guess. 

He tried to keep his voice light, but it came out wrong. Too brittle.

“How do you figure?”

Phil moved a few steps closer. He came around the ventilation unit so Clint could have looked up and seen him, if he tried.

He didn’t.

“It was one of your earlier missions, and the second with a different handler. Markem was good, experienced, and he knew you’d been with S.H.I.E.L.D. for a few years by then. Plus, it wasn’t supposed to be an up-close surveillance mission. You wouldn’t have been briefed.”

It sounded like Coulson had his entire file memorized. Clint knew he could have looked it up in the hotel room, but he didn’t think he’d needed to. He was just that good. 

“Wasn’t supposed to be,” he said, which didn’t mean Phil was right, only that it totally did.

“You came back from that mission upset,” Phil continued. His voice was level, but Clint could hear the anger underneath it. Like back in the hotel room - Phil trying so hard to stay calm and just missing the mark.

“You’ve always been uncomfortable in large groups, up close to people. But for two weeks after the Weston mission it was worse. You almost broke my arm when I stepped too close.”

Clint remembered that. A presence in line behind him at headquarters, and only the realization that it was _Phil_ stopping him when his hands automatically came up to defend himself.

“It wasn’t _you_ ,” he hurried to say. He’d taken off then, mumbled something and left. Phil had bought him an extra sandwich and left it in the ventilation duct above his office as an apology. 

“I know,” Phil said now. Clint gave in and looked up at him. Phil’s face was in shadow, but his hands were clenched at his sides. “But I should have paid more attention, looked into the cause of what had made you so upset. I glanced through Markem’s files, but - “

Clint sighed. “It wasn’t Markem’s fault.”

If anything, Phil looked even angrier. “He was your handler, he - “ 

“No, listen -” Clint could take looking like an idiot, but he didn’t want Coulson to blame anyone else for his stupidity. “It really wasn’t,” Clint said. “I never even told him what happened.”

Phil went tense beside him. Clint sighed.

“Weston had a portable safe in his hotel room where I couldn’t get eyes on him,” Clint explained. “I’d gone ground-level to sneak a peek and got caught walking around the hotel. I played it out, easy style, and it led back to his room. It wasn’t ...” Clint swallowed thickly, “... wasn’t too bad. Just a ... just a blow job. He passed out. I raided the box and got the information we needed. I told Markem I’d managed to sneak in without being caught.”

Phil’s voice was steady. He was still angry, but Clint didn’t think he was angry at _him_. “Why didn’t you tell him the truth?”

Clint shrugged, looking down at his shoes. “I was embarrassed. Hadn’t done anything like that in a while, hadn’t even meant to. But I felt trapped like ... like tonight, even. It just came naturally.” He laughed hollowly. “Fuck, what does that say about me?”

“It says that you’ve been pushed into too many scenarios when you have no one to count on but yourself, and no one to get you out when you needed it,” Phil growled. Clint looked over, surprised. Phil’s face was hard and his hands were clenched at his sides again. 

He knew Phil cared about him. Phil cared about all his agents, everyone at S.H.I.E.L.D. – hell, everyone on the damn planet, probably. But Clint had never felt it this personally before.

“Hey,” he said gently, stretching a little to bump his toes against Phil’s feet, “it wasn’t your fault.” He felt the tension in Phil’s leg, knew it radiated through his whole body. That couldn’t be good for his still-healing chest wound. “Tonight wasn’t your fault either.”

Phil didn’t relax. He didn’t look over at Clint, either, but stared straight ahead over the side of the building. They were ten stories up, but Phil didn’t seem to care.

“I should have gotten to Woo. I was the point man on the ground, and I couldn’t figure out how to get away from my mark.”

Clint shook his head, “You were doing your job, gathering intel. Staying in character.”

Phil licked his lips, looked down. “I almost broke my glass.”

Clint looked at him, confused. “Your what?”

It was hard to tell in the dim light, but he thought Phil blushed. “My glass. When you were outside the hotel, flirting with that asshole. Swanson had just gotten me a scotch in his really heavy glass, and I gripped it so hard it almost shattered. I wanted to put it down but then he would have seen how my hands were shaking, so I couldn’t. I wanted _so badly_ to just run outside and _punch_ that asshole, I -”

Clint let out a low huff of a laugh. Was Phil shitting him? 

“Yeah, that would have worked out well. Peter Camp, whitewasher extraordinaire, beating up Richard Hambly because he hit on some random, worthless bartender.”

Phil’s eyes cut into him. 

“You are never worthless.”

Clint sucked in a breath, caught for a moment by the intensity of Phil’s stare. 

Phil broke it first, looking away. Clint breathed out slowly through his nose. He stared at Phil’s profile in the dim light. 

“What is driving me crazy,” Phil went on, his voice back to its forced calm, “is how many times have you been sent into the field without the proper information? I know you haven’t exactly read the manual, but something like a Get Out signal is standard procedure. How many times has someone assumed that you knew that, and left you to fend for yourself on a S.H.I.E.L.D.-sanctioned op?”

Clint shook his head. “Not that often, really.” He put up a hand at Phil’s protest. “No, really. You would have noticed anyway, right? I mean,” he blushed, “you did after Milan.”

Phil looked over at him, and Clint hoped it was too dim for Phil to see his blush. After a moment, Phil nodded. “I would have.”

Clint’s lips twitched up. “There you go.” He shook his head. “It was always Nat who gets sent out to seduce the rich guy. I’ve done it a few times with women, but nothing that had to go anywhere.” He hitched a shoulder. “I don’t think S.H.I.E.L.D. sees me as that kind of asset. Usually I just get told to shoot someone.”

Phil shook his head. “There aren’t that many publically gay kingpins out there, Barton. S.H.I.E.L.D. knows how valuable you are in counter-espionage. If there had been a need, you would have been called.”

Clint gave him a twisted smile. “There are more than you think.”

Phil surprised him by snorting softly. “Clint, you could make the Pope himself sit up and demand a blow-job. I wouldn’t use your experience to collect a roster of homoerotically stimulated gangsters.”

Clint blinked at him, surprised. Phil gazed back at him calmly. His face was still in shadow, but Clint was caught by the faint hint of _something_ in his eyes. 

The moment stretched out. Finally, Phil smiled with the corner of his mouth.

“Come on,” he said. He reached forward and held a hand out to Clint. “Natasha will be waiting.”

It took Clint a second to get his breath back.

“Right,” Clint said, a little shakily. He took the hand Phil offered him, but made sure not to pull on the still-healing agent as he stood. He let go of Coulson’s hand once he was up, and Phil gave him another one of those small smiles.

Clint smiled back, hesitant. Then he turned and walked back towards the roof door. Phil followed, a shade closer than he normally did. 

 

~~~

 

Phil had been right – Nat was waiting for them. She was sitting on the floor in the first bedroom with her knees crossed, meditating silently. She had on her favourite cotton pyjamas, the spider ones Phil had given her three years ago after that op in Alaska. Clint grinned at her. It seemed he wasn’t the only one in need of comfort tonight.

She lifted her eyebrows when they came in, but didn’t bother to open her eyes. 

“Ты лучше себя чувствуешь?” she asked.

Clint didn’t bother replying, just slumped down beside her on the floor. It was hard with the thin hotel carpet, but being non-vertical felt great. He had been up for almost twenty-two hours by that point, and most of those under a significant amount of stress. He was starting to feel it.

Nat opened her eyes and gave Clint a small, fond smile. Then she reached under the bed and dragged out an extra comforter and bed sheet. There were already two pillows by the bed. Taking him by the elbow, Nat rolled him over so she could make a spot for them on the floor.

Clint moved easily when she pushed him, then scooted back when she had finished. He sighed in relief to feel the clean sheet under his t-shirt and pulled the thick comforter up over himself on his side of the floor.

Phil watched them from the doorway. “You both realize I _am_ medically fit for duty,” he said, his voice dry. “I am perfectly capable of sleeping on the floor while one of you take the bed.”

“No,” Clint and Nat said together.

Phil sighed.

Clint grinned facedown into his pillow as Phil stripped out of his suit and made his way grudgingly to the bed. Usually they rolled dice for it, or at least pretended. After the first night whoever had the worst shift usually got bullied into the bed at the insistence of the other two.

It felt good to be doing this again. For the moment, the bedroom door closed, Clint could pretend the past six months had never happened. That Thor had never appeared with his unmovable hammer, and that he’d never been tapped for tesseract watching duties in New Mexico. It could be Belgrade again, or Shanghai, or any one of the other fifty missions they had run together, just the three of them.

Maybe, Clint thought, he’d be able to get more than three hours of sleep tonight.

These days, that was something to savour.

 

~~~

 

Clint woke a miraculous five hours later feeling incredibly refreshed. He stared at the clock, marveling at the time. He hadn’t slept so long in weeks. 

Rising silently from his makeshift bed, Clint left Nat and Phil sleeping in the bedroom. Neither looked as if they had moved much from when they first hit the pillow, and Clint realized again how hard the past few weeks had been on everyone. 

He put the cheap hotel coffee machine on before wandering over to Jamisen on the couch. The senior agent looked up and waved at him before turning back to his cellphone.

Clint figured he was talking to the Beta team and turned to Kumar while Jamisen finished. She smiled at him and dug around under her second laptop for a file folder. Pulling it out, she handed it to him before refocusing on her screens. Clint took the folder to the opposite chair with his coffee.

It was a full biography on Cody Brinton, age 38. Apparently he had been a ski bum for fifteen years after high school, taught mostly downhill and some cross-country, and barely made enough to support himself. The real Cody Brinton had died last year in an unpublicized accident while skiing in the back country, and S.H.I.E.L.D. had appropriated his information. Cody hadn’t had anyone who missed him – no long-term relationships, both parents dead, only child. He had a full credit history and an uncomplicated life story if someone wanted to do a little digging. His physical parameters hadn’t needed much tweaking to fit Clint, and his picture had supplanted the real sandy-haired Cody Brinton in official documents.

They got most of their best covers this way, through the accidental deaths of unimportant but nonetheless real people. It made some agents feel ghoulish, but Clint always felt it was simply practical. Most people wanted their deaths to mean something. But helping S.H.I.E.L.D., Cody’s did. 

The Cody Brinton Clint was taking over had been in the same accident but escaped with non-life-threatening injuries. He had messed up his knee, though, not enough to leave a limp but enough to take him out of back country skiing. He still did regular downhill when he could but had polished off his long-dead bartending skills to make ends meet. He was here at this hotel because it was within driving distance of some of the bigger ski resorts but too far away to require people who could teach on their off hours.

A simple, uncomplicated story. Clint memorized it before he finished his first cup of coffee.

His official documents were also in the file. Clint double-checked the driver’s license and social security card, making sure the numbers were right. It never hurt to have a second, or even a third or fourth pair of eyes on those things.

S.H.I.E.L.D. had taught him that. One of the many luxuries he’d never had in the circus, or as a merc.

Clint shook off the memories. It was not a good way to start the day, not with his “date” hanging over his head. Best to keep his focus on one thing at a time.

He refilled his coffee and was pouring another two cups when the bedroom door opened and Natasha walked out. She took one of the coffees and inclined her head towards the door. “Coulson’s on his way out.”

Jamisen finished his conversation on the couch, and Nat and Clint settled themselves in the common room. Phil appeared behind them a few minutes later, already dressed in this day’s suit. He sipped at his coffee.

“Okay,” Jamisen told them all, his eyes a little strained from lack of sleep. “Henderson and Neil, with standard backup, took the car last night. Woo drove them to our Beta location, already set up to look like Hambly’s operation. He couldn’t get a weapons location out of the goons or the driver, but Woo thinks that’s because they don’t know. Apparently it’s a new drop location, and only Hambly’s people have been there. We’re keeping them under lock and key for the rest of the day and Woo will focus on tracking Hambly. Looks like he’s staying at the hotel with the other Big Three, so we’ll have a tail on him at all times.”

Coulson nodded. If it was strange for him to be listening to Jamisen, when he was used to being the one who ran the production, he didn’t show it. “Swanson hinted that there were a number of deals going down today, starting with the negotiation of weapons after dinner tonight and finishing up tomorrow morning. Hambly will be heading up those conversations. We know the weapons cache is nearby, so it’s likely he or one of his associates will be back and forth from the location today.”

Jamisen nodded. “We’re going to do our best to track him, but he’s managed to avoid us so far. If we can get a location, we can raid the building and hope HYDRA blames Hambly for the loss. If we can’t, we will have to wait until the final distribution when they can’t hope to keep the location secret, and take everyone – Hambly and the others, Father Roni, Michelmas and Naruko – at the same time. We can get the personnel together we would need for a hit that big, but that’s our worst case scenario. The other three are known targets, and we don’t get much ahead for taking them out here. Hambly is the main threat.”

Clint nodded, “And we run the risk of uniting them together against S.H.I.E.L.D. HYDRA is enough of an arch-enemy, I think.”

“Agreed,” Coulson said.

Jamisen huffed a laugh. “Yeah, I’ll say.” He shook his head, “Coulson, you stay where you are. Peter Camp is our ace in the hole. Run the ground as you see fit, just keep me in the loop. You see an opportunity for intel or improvement, you take it. Romanov, good work yesterday. Roni is going to want to keep you close. Any chance you have to exploit that, go for it. I have your signals here, and since you likely won’t be in any of the direct meetings, this _gây phiền nhiễu_ interference bullshit shouldn’t apply as heavily. You feel exposed, you get out.”

“Oh, and on that note,” Jamisen switched tracks, “Woo thinks they made him because Hambly apparently stole a few key personnel from Naruko last year and one of them is a dead ringer for Woo. We don’t think Naruko noticed, because he was still in his room when Woo got made, but be alert for any tensions today. These guys are obviously not used to meeting so publicly like this, and just as obviously, they seriously hate each other. I’m mildly surprised no one’s killed anyone outright yet. The money Hambly is putting on this – via HYDRA – is all that’s holding these wise guys together. After the op goes down, I want everyone out ASAP. These people are businessmen, but I put money on things turning ugly.”

“Speaking of ugly,” Jamisen turned to Clint, “you have a terrible valet outfit to put on. I apologize in advance.”

“This is why I hate undercover work,” Clint deadpanned, releasing some of the tension that had built up in the room. “My personal feelings of style and expression get lost in the art.”

“I didn’t realize hating everything with sleeves and a button up counted as style, Barton,” Phil commented dryly. 

Nat raised one eyebrow, “Or refusing to wear anything but purple,” she agreed.

“It’s a unique look,” Clint told them earnestly, “all the cool kids are doing it.”

Jamisen rolled his eyes. “Yes, well, you can dress yourself again when you get back from your date. Agent Romanov volunteered to go shopping for you this morning, so you’re stuck with what she picks for you tonight. She’ll have some time before the meetings start, while you’re at your valet duties.”

“Aw, man,” Clint groused for Kumar and Jamisen, even though he was secretly pleased. Nat wouldn’t dress him stupid for an actual op. “I’d better get to drive some sweet-looking cars.”

“Keep your eyes out for anything suspicious,” Jamisen warned. “As noted, these people hate each other. I wouldn’t put it past someone to car bomb one of their rivals. We have eyes on the parking lot, but check before you start any engines.”

“I will,” Clint nodded seriously, catching Phil taking a deep breath in and out through his nose. He tried to hide it behind his coffee, but Clint still noticed. Despite himself, Clint felt a little thrill. Maybe last night’s concern wasn’t a one-off thing.

The next few hours passed in a blur. Clint did have a horrendously ugly valet suit to wear, but Nat, disguised as the “friend” that would be in a car accident that evening if Clint needed to use his Get Out signal, dropped him off at the hotel. At least he didn’t have to suffer through a bus ride wearing the thing.

He spent his shift driving cars around. The hotel was pricey but off the beaten trail of those tourists looking to play golf or go hiking in the summer months. As a result, the hotel catered to a more elite type of customer, which meant Clint did in fact get to drive some beautiful-looking cars. There was this one fire red mustang that just – yeah. It was a nice car. 

He did check for car bombs, but nothing went boom. When he wasn’t stroking dashboards, he was mostly bored. He tried to chat with his fellow valets, but there were only two of them on duty this early in the day and both were young kids in their twenties. Clint failed at small talk anyway, so he didn’t try too hard.

He did keep his eyes out for Hambly, Father Roni, and any of their teams. The first half of his shift passed uneventfully but at one thirty, when he was coming back from his lunch break, Clint spotted Hambly getting into the white limo one of the other valets had fetched for him.

Clint called it in. Coulson answered him – it was Jamisen’s turn to sleep – and told him the Beta team was on it. 

Not ten minutes later, though, Coulson radioed back. Something had gone wrong. Clint could hear the faintest shred of irritation in his voice.

“Negative on Hambly. We’ve lost him.”

“Lost him?” Clint echoed. He’d been hanging back from the other valets so no one could call him on talking to himself. “He’s in a white limo – it’s not exactly inconspicuous”

“Agreed,” Coulson said, “but somehow we lost him anyways. Not sure how. Matthews on the Beta team said he was directly in their sight when the limo turned a corner and then they lost it. Working on how.”

“Understood,” Clint said, because what else was he going to say? S.H.I.E.L.D. agents didn’t screw up often, but mistakes happened. And he remembered Coulson saying that morning that Hambly had been difficult to track. Maybe that driver of his was really good. 

Or maybe HYDRA had supplied more tech. Fuck, Tony would be impossible to live with, after this.

Hambly pulled back up to the hotel later that afternoon, right before Clint got off shift. He let John, the other valet, take the keys – and the tip – explaining that he wanted to get off early more than he wanted the money. Mostly he just wanted to avoid Hambly.

“He’s back,” Clint radioed in. Nat was taking a turn at the reins, Coulson having left already to resume his Peter Camp identity.

“Understood,” Nat said, her voice even over the line. “Beta team tracked him in. Apparently it happened again – the road was busy but clear, and then the white limo appeared.”

Clint squinted out of valet break room window. He watched Hambly’s driver step out of the car and walk around to open Hambly’s door. 

One time could be an accident, but two? Something fishy was going on.

“So we’re thinking, what, some kind of cloaking technology?”

He could practically hear her shrug over the line. “Possibly. Stark is running the numbers now.”

Clint smirked. “And how many times has he threatened bodily injury and/or robot dismemberment?”

“Only five,” Natasha said. “Jamisen says we’re a bad influence on him.”

“He’s just jealous because Fury promised him swift and ugly death if he invaded the op,” Clint said, watching as Hambly entered the hotel through the front door. Clint tracked him as he walked towards the elevator bank, and waited for him get in before turning away and heading to the small staff bathroom to change.

“He _has_ promised me shiny new tech if I can get Coulson to change his mind,” Natasha agreed. She sounded amused.

“Fuck no,” Clint groaned, taking off his valet outfit. “Tony Stark is not allowed on a sneak and supply mission. Not ever. He’s almost as bad – no actually, I think he’d be _worse_ than Thor on an undercover op.”

Clint folded his valet clothes and put them away in the black gym bag Nat had left for him in the break room. Unless they could get the weapons location today he’d probably have the wear the ugly thing again tomorrow. 

“Twenty bucks says Rogers gets made on an op before Stark does,” Nat said, her voice warm.

“Hell no,” Clint said, opening the bag to find the bartending clothes Nat had picked for him for tonight. “Get Coulson to root for his childhood hero if you want. I’m keeping my money.”

Nat snorted in his ear.

Clint dressed quickly. Natasha had bought him a pair of casual but professional-looking black trousers, with a black t-shirt that was softer and nicer looking than any t-shirt he’d ever owned. There was also a new pair of comfortable leather loafers, and a belt. 

Clint grinned to find the heavy belt clasp concealed a lock-picking kit. He checked the shoes and found the set of throwing knives concealed beneath the heel. 

“Nice,” he said, out loud. This time, he could definitely hear Nat’s smile. 

“Check the jacket,” she offered.

Clint did, with a grin. The jacket was black leather, soft as butter, and fit like a dream. It came high on his waist and twisted with him. It wouldn’t impede his speed or his aim, and Clint loved it immediately. 

Inside the left inner pocket was another knife, this one pencil thin, and there was a set of six ear comms beneath a hidden patch on the right. Behind these was what looked like a contact lens case. When Clint pried it open the left side held two small white pills instead of a lens, and the right had a small wafer-thin circuit board in a plastic cover.

“What’s this?” he asked Nat.

“The pills are knock-outs, twenty-second delay when swallowed. You could apply them to any mucus membrane but they’ll take a while to dissolve. Count on a solid minute if you have to use them that way. Invisible in clear liquid, but they taste a little sour. Best to put them in something sweet. If you can’t give the Get Out signal, or if something goes wrong, use them. Hambly’ll wake up in the morning feeling groggy with about a half hour of amnesia. Much softer than GHB. If you play it right with alcohol, he’ll never know he was drugged,” Nat explained.

Clint felt a wave of relief hit him so strong, it threatened to suck him under. Damn. How the hell had he survived so many years on his own?

“The circuit board is a tracker,” Nat went on. “Keep it on you and we’ll have real-time GPS location at all times. Find a way to plant it on or in Hambly, and he’ll lead us right to the weapons cache, cloaking field or no cloaking field. If you can get him to swallow it, the tracker should be good for twenty-four to forty-eight hours. It’ll pick up interference like the comm, but it shouldn’t degrade as fast.”

“Right,” Clint agreed. He studied the wafer. 

On or in. _Great_. 

“Jamisen is coming online now,” Natasha told him as Clint deliberately focused on sliding on his belt, not thinking about his “date” that night. “I’ll see you at the bar in thirty.”

“Sounds good,” Clint told her, summoning up a smirk. “I’ll make you a peppermint schnapps.”

“In case you can’t feel it from that end, Barton, I am flipping you off from the hotel room. Jamisen is my witness.”

“All I feel is the love, Nat. All I feel is the love.”

 

~~~

 

Clint’s bar shift went much faster than his valet duties. For one, the bar was filling up pretty quickly. He was glad he skimmed the Ultimate Drinks Manual on his way in that morning, because the requests kept him on his toes. It had been a while since he bartended professionally. It was even fun, in a stressful kind of way, because Nat arrived at the thirty minute mark and Phil showed up not long after. 

Clint kept the spare comms in his pocket and had an ear on them at all times. Now that he wasn’t on sniper duty, Jamisen had given him the full Alpha round of comms, so he had Nat, Phil, Jamisen, Watson, and Kumar in his ear. Kumar was at her computers in the surveillance van and kept silent most of the night. Watson was back on the rifle, having gotten more hours of sleep than Clint himself had. Woo was coordinating the Beta team, and Jamisen kept their chatter separate. 

Phil was the point man on the ground, and he was the one whose comm was the most likely to buzz on or off during the course of the night. He had left the hotel with two spares, but they found it only took two or three hours to burn through one. He’d been in high-level meetings with the Big Three for the afternoon, doing whitewash deals that would, if his business practice had been real and not a S.H.I.E.L.D.-created cover, have made him a significant amount of money over the year to come.

“Glad you’re on our side, sir,” Clint had murmured to him under the cover of turning to get a new bottle of Jack Daniels from under the sink. Phil had closed yet _another_ deal for a hundred thousand dollars of “dirty” money he would launder for Naruko’s gang in the spring.

Phil didn’t bother replying, but he did signal for two glasses of champagne to seal the deal, and gave Clint the blandest expression he could muster when he did.

It took a few hours for Hambly to arrive. Clint was mixing daiquiris for a table of business men and women in the corner, not associated with the Evil Empires Conference, when he saw him. Hambly walked into the room with confidence, drawing eyes as the conversation around him dimmed. The gun-runner smiled and paused in the entranceway, waiting for the low buzz of noise to resume. Clint watched him taking note of the room, identifying the positions of his top people and the deals they were working on. He focussed for a beat on Phil, attention flickering to the glass of celebratory champagne in his hand, before his eyes wandered to the bar and caught on Clint himself.

He obviously hadn't expected Clint to be here. Clint sucked in a breath as Hambly's gaze turned hungry. He felt his adrenalin surge as his muscles automatically loosened, readying himself for a “fight or fuck” situation. Hambly paused for another beat, his eyes tracing up Clint's waist and chest to his face, then back down to track his arms as Clint wiped the bar with a damp towel.

Clint tried to pay attention to his reactions. He couldn’t afford to play this thing out on instinct; he had to at least understand what it was his brain was doing. 

Deliberately, Clint wiped the bar with more force than necessary, flexing his biceps as he did. Even from this distance Clint could see Hambly’s pupil’s dilate, the lust clear on his face. Clint noted the man’s weakness, and filed it away. He wanted Hambly to watch his arms, not his face. Clint wasn’t really that good of an actor. He knew the more he could keep Hambly off-balance, the greater chance he’d have to succeed with the gun-runner tonight. 

It was similar to the trick he used to pull at S.H.I.E.L.D., back when he was learning the ropes. Mouthing off to his handlers, rattling the other agents. Clint was good at keeping people off-balance. Now that he was thinking about it, he could remember doing a similar thing at the orphanage and the circus. He had always been small. It had made sense to distract the larger bullies so he could get away before they hit him, or hit first before anyone could see. 

Only sometime after the circus, and before S.H.I.E.L.D., Clint had learned you couldn’t always run away and you couldn’t always hit back. Sometimes you had to let them hit you, and it hurt a lot less if they made you suck them off rather than punch you in the face.

His body remembered that lesson as Hambly walked over to the corner of the bar and stopped, staring at Clint as he stood waiting.

“Hello, gorgeous,” Hambly said, letting his eyes travel up Clint’s body to his face. “This is a pleasant surprise.”

Clint forced himself to smile, “Told you I got off at eight. Well,” he shrugged, “I’m here till eight.” He indicated the pretty full bar. There were several groups scattered around the various tables, Phil and Naruko’s rep at one and Father Roni’s guys with Swanson at another.

There were also a number of very pretty girls scattered around, obviously waiting for dates.

Clint made his voice a shade hesitant. “You, uh, here to meet someone?”

Hambly chuckled. “Unfortunately. Not to worry, gorgeous, no one as pretty as you.” He looked over at Swanson, and Clint followed his gaze. The second-in-command nodded, and Hambly sighed. “But I do have some business deals to conclude before our dinner tonight.”

“Well,” Clint said, letting the relief he felt show in his voice. He was glad Hambly wasn’t sticking around. “I’ll let you get to it, then.”

But instead of leaving, Hambly leaned forward around the bar. “First I’ll have a scotch and soda, please. No ice.”

“Sure,” Clint smiled and turned towards the bottle shelf. He itched to show Hambly his back, but he wondered if he could use this to his advantage. If he could plant the tracker in Hambly’s drink, maybe he could get this whole thing over with. He reached over for the scotch bottle, thinking about the tracker in his pocket. 

He tried to work the logistics out as he poured the scotch and added the soda. It was too big to be sucked up a straw, and too obvious to just dangle in the glass. Maybe if he - 

Clint felt a presence behind him and a man’s hand on his back. He froze, muscles locking in an effort not to drop the glass, spin around, and break the man’s hand. Caught in that moment of hesitation, Clint felt the hand pushing at him. Numbly, Clint allowed himself to be turned around, fingers white on the scotch bottle and the glass. 

Hambly had stepped around the bar and into the drink mixing area, leaning forward to trap Clint against the back shelf. Clint stared at him. Hambly grinned and put both hands on Clint’s waist. He leaned in and licked once at his mouth. 

Clint had the warring, simultaneous desire to both head-butt Hambly in the forehead and suck on the man’s tongue. The first would get him out of the situation, and the second would put him more in control. He had to focus on Jamisen’s words at the briefing that morning to remember that he was here to find a way to plant the tracker on Hambly. The man liked to be in control – he might get turned on if Clint took the initiative, but he wouldn’t like it as much as if Clint let him do what he liked. 

Remembering that, and telling himself that head-butting Hambly would piss Jamisen off and likely ruin the mission – which would put Phil in danger – Clint opened his mouth and let the gun-runner in. Hambly, not the kind of man who needed to be told twice, took the opportunity to plunder it ruthlessly.

The pressure on his mouth increased, and Clint felt the familiar stirrings of panic. It was too much – Clint was trapped by the counter behind him and Hambly in front. His adrenalin surged and he wanted, desperately, to smash the scotch bottle over Hambly temple, drag a shard of glass across his carotid artery, and bleed him dry. But he couldn’t. Clint sucked in a breath, trying to get a grip on himself, and felt Hambly chuckle against his mouth. 

Instead of killing Hambly, Clint consciously let his body do what it wanted to anyway, which was to loosen and go with it, thrusting his hips forward. It was his instinctual reaction to this kind of danger, his mind reaching and assessing the risks and consequences. With his reach extended, Clint knew Hambly couldn’t grab his ass from behind. That way Hambly wouldn’t feel the knife Clint had strapped to the middle of his back, and Clint wouldn’t have to kill him with it. 

Alert as he was to what his mark was thinking and doing, Clint felt his hearing ramp up, assessing the threats in the room. He listened for the shifts, for the quick breaths that would tell him if more were coming, if this was a set up for a hit.

It wasn’t, of course. It was just a guy hitting on his weekend piece of ass, not caring that if Clint was who he said he was, this kind of shit could probably get him fired.

Clint’s view of the room was blocked by Hambly head, but he knew where Phil and Nat were nearby. He could hear Phil breathing on the comm, suddenly harsh enough for the microphone to pick up, while Nat laughed at something Father Roni had said.

He had back-up, Clint told himself, relaxing his grip on the scotch glass, opening his mouth a little wider for Hambly. He let the man take what he wanted. If he needed it, Clint told himself, both Phil and Nat would break character to get to him and fuck the op. He knew that. 

It helped him keep his knees locked when they would have buckled. Clint’s reaction to danger was always to get his mouth on the guy’s dick. When he had a dick in his mouth, Clint had some control. 

After all, he could always bite it off. 

Finally the kiss stopped. Hambly licked one last time at his bottom lip before leaning back and taking the double shot of scotch from Clint’s hand. He smirked, took the soda can, and topped off the glass while grinding his hips into Clint’s. Then he held Clint’s eyes and took a long sip of the drink.

“Nice,” he said, licking his lips and sliding back. Clint managed a shaky smirk, not trusting himself to move. The urge to go for the killing blow was still too strong. Instead, he let Hambly look while he peripherally scanned the room.

Nat was still sitting by Roni, but she was looking over her shoulder at Clint. Her eyes asked a question, and Clint answered by giving Hambly a wink. He knew Nat would see and understand. 

Phil was more difficult to find. Finally, Clint spotted him – he had actually moved away from Michelmas and was walking towards the bar. Clint watched him out of the corner of his eye as he kept his gaze on Hambly, who was slowly moving away and back around to the front of the bar.

“Don’t hesitate to come back if you want another,” he said to Hambly, grinning around the nausea. He felt like he wanted to throw up. Maybe next time he could stick the tracker in a lemon wedge and choke the fucker with it.

“I think a taste is enough for now,” Hambly winked. “I’ll see you at eight.”

Clint made himself laugh. He didn’t care that it came out harsher than it should have. “At eight, then.”

Phil sidled up to the bar as Hambly turned around. “Richard,” Phil said, smirking a little. “Starting the party early are we?”

“Peter,” Hambly acknowledged with a grin. Clint watched his eyes as they flickered up and down Phil’s neat form. His hand tightened around the soda can, crushing it. Quickly, he stashed the half-empty can under the bar. 

Phil was still smiling at the weapons runner when Clint looked up again, though his gaze had turned hard. “I’d like to talk to you about the northern east coast, if you have the time.”

Hambly gave him a wicked grin. “I’d love too. Let me just chat with Michelmas first and suss out whatever promises you’ve made to _him_. Then we can do business.”

Phil grinned, all teeth. “By all means.” He gestured to the floor and Hambly swaggered off. Phil turned back to Clint.

“Dark rum and coke, please.”

Clint looked into Phil’s eyes, saw the concern and anger there, and took a deep breath. “Sure.”

He turned back to the bar, twitching a little as he placed his back again to the room. He breathed again, knowing Phil was behind him. Nothing would happen this time.

His hands didn’t shake as they closed over the Goslings, but they wanted too. Clint breathed through the adrenalin crash, reminding himself that he couldn’t come all the way down, that Phil could only give him a minute or so to get his shit together.

He used the minute to its full advantage though, carefully pouring the drink and opening a can of coke, adding the lime. By the time he was done he was feeling a little more human, a little less messed up.

He turned back to Phil with a friendly smile, “Here you go. Peter, was it?”

Phil chuckled at him, “Yes. Thanks for the drink.” He took the glass and paid for it, something Hambly hadn’t done. Clint took the money.

“You need change?” he asked. It was one of their signals for a mic switch.

But Phil shook his head, “No. I’m good.” He raised the glass, “It’s a good drink. I’ll come back when I need a refill.”

“You do that,” Clint said, smirking. He made himself look away from Phil.

The rest of his shift passed quickly after that. He tried to keep his ears open for anything of import, but most of the negotiations were taking place in the backrooms where the shielding Tony hadn’t broken yet was set up. He listened through the comms as Nat and Phil circled the room, spinning their tales. Phil was accumulating some serious cash and everyone seemed impressed with the whitewasher from Manhattan. Nat was equally successful as the Pretty Young Thing Roni kept plastered to his side. Hambly didn’t come back to the bar, which Clint was thankful for. 

Too soon, though, the hand on the clock across the bar struck eight. Phil and Nat left with the others as they headed to the hotel dining room. Phil turned and caught Clint’s eye as they left. It was a quick look, but it seemed to say _Be careful_.

Clint wasn’t sure what to say back. Before he could think of anything, Phil was gone.

With the large group leaving the bar seemed a little less noisy, but it was still hopping. Clint’s backup had arrived at seven and another shift changer was coming on now. Clint nodded at the girl and took off his apron, collecting his tips and moving to stand by the front of the bar.

Hambly had said to meet him outside, but he knew where Clint worked now. Surely he - ?

“Barton, Hambly approaching on your three o’clock.”

Clint looked out the large bay windows and smiled in the direction Jamisen must be stationed. “You my eyes tonight, Jamisen?”

The agent laughed at him, “Watson’s trailing Romanov, says she’s prettier.”

“Can’t argue with that,” Clint agreed, glad to know that their sniper was keeping her eye on Nat and Phil. He leaned back against the bar and practised channelling his nervousness into excitement. It wasn’t easy.

Sure enough, Hambly appeared at his three o’clock, walking into the bar from the direction of the main lobby. Clint had watched him leave the group negotiations earlier, but Nat hadn’t dared leave Roni’s side to investigate. Clint knew the Beta team had tried to track him again and failed. No one knew where he had been for the past three hours, and it was Clint’s job to try and find out.

That, and plant the tracker on the man. Without sacrificing his virtue to do it. 

Hambly caught Clint’s eye and smiled. Clint forced himself to grin back. _Just go with it_ , he thought to himself. _Complete the mission and get the fuck out of Dodge. That’s your duty tonight, Specialist._

Hambly strolled confidently up to the bar. “Hey, gorgeous,” he eyed Clint’s leather jacket and his smile turned wicked. “You ready to find out what dinner gets me?”

Clint rolled his eyes, “Smooth, man. Where are we going?”

Hambly grinned, “You’ll see.” He turned and led the way out of the bar, heading towards the elevator bank.

“The dining room’s that way,” Clint pointed to the east-end corridor the others had disappeared down. “There isn’t anywhere to eat upstairs.”

“It’s called ‘room service’,” Hambly laughed, all teeth. “Come on, beautiful, I’m good for it.”

Clint shrugged, affecting unconcern, while he surreptitiously checked that his ear mic was still in place. He hadn’t quite planned on getting access to Hambly’s room this early in the game. He hoped Jamisen would be able to change his line and keep eyes on him.

“Okay then, sure,” Clint agreed, stepping with Hambly towards the elevators. “Though I think agreeing to dinner in your room earns me a first name.”

Hambly stepped forward, hooking his fingers into the back of Clint’s belt. He pulled the younger man towards him. “You want to know what you’ll be screaming later?”

Clint felt the adrenalin rush again at the unwelcome touch. He felt himself go boneless, sliding forward into Hambly’s grip. Fuck, this was too much like old times. “Maybe,” he heard his mouth say.

The elevator dinged, and they shuffled in together, Hambly turning to press Clint into the mirrored wall of the elevator car. Clint gave up trying to think consciously about how to react. Obviously, his body remembered more than he wanted it to. It knew how to play this out, how to rope Hambly in. So he let his hands come around to grab Hambly’s ass and pull the man closer towards him. They were practically grinding in the elevator, and Hambly’s mouth was on him again, kissing him ruthlessly as the car rose.

Hambly had hit the number 22 when they got in, and at 21 Clint grinned into Hambly’s mouth and leaned back, pushing the other man away. “That’s what an elevator ride gets you. Dinner, well, we’ll have to see.”

Hambly laughed, low and dirty, and when the doors opened he placed his hand possessively on the small of Clint’s back. Leaving it there, he guided the sniper into the 22nd floor hallway, ushering Clint towards room 2231.

Clint knew they didn’t have good eyes on Hambly’s room. It was at an odd angle to the surrounding buildings, something Hambly had definitely secured on purpose. There were a few shots Clint could have made from the bank next door, but not many. He didn’t think Jamisen would have any.

But he could still keep an eye on him, and Clint had the knock-out pills and the Get Out signal. That was a hell of a lot more than he had the last time he had done this, or hell, the last six times. 

A lot of seedy merc contracts got handed out at motel rooms, and not all of them were people Clint could kill for touching him. Sometimes those contracts that been all that kept him alive, in favours and cash both. Too many times Clint had bedded someone for the privilege of walking away after. 

Each time he told himself he would rather die than do it again, and each time he’d gone ahead and done it again regardless. His survival instinct cared more about breathing than virtue, no matter what Natasha said about him not having one.

Room 2231 was a mini-suite. Hambly ran his plastic card through the scanner and the door clicked open. The gun-runner held it open for Clint and then guided him in, his right hand still on the centre of Clint’s back. 

Clint took in the room at a glance. There was a mini-kitchen with a microwave, a blender and the ubiquitous coffee pot. A door to the right opened into a large bathroom with a curving shower curtain and a bathtub that looked big enough to swim in. Beyond the mini-kitchen was a large king-sized bed and a 50 inch flat screen 3D TV mounted on the left-hand wall. Curving towards the windows, both large and open to the surrounding building lights, was a white couch with a glass coffee table.

“Sweet room,” Clint said, eyeing the setup. He memorized the layout, the distance to the coffee pot, the remote control, the handle to the bathroom, and the outside windows.

Hambly grinned at him. “Told you I was good for it.”

Clint turned back to smile at him. Hambly grabbed him by the back of the neck and pulled him in, sticking his tongue into Clint’s mouth and fucking it ruthlessly.

It would have been hot if Clint had been into this. As it was, he’d have to be creative about keeping Hambly from the front of his jeans, or the man was going to realize none of this was working for Clint.

After a few minutes of kissing, during which Clint hoped desperately that someone had muted his comm to the rest of the Alpha team, Hambly let him go.

“What do you want for dinner?” he asked, going to the hotel desk and retrieving the four-page menu from a drawer. Clint took another moment to look over the room as Hambly walked away.

He couldn’t see any cameras or microphones, though that didn’t mean they weren’t there. It was possible one of Hambly’s rivals had gotten lucky where S.H.I.E.L.D. had not. 

He also didn’t see anything that could be causing interference on the comms. Maybe Hambly didn’t have it turned on yet. Clint couldn’t hear anything unusual in his ear. As much as he hated the idea of the entire team listening to him, it would be better to know if the interference was working or not.

“Anything you’ve tried before?” Clint asked, using one of their catchphrases. 

“Hawkeye, this is your response for a mic check. You are coming in loud and clear.” Jamisen’s voice replied, steady in his ear.

“The roasted red pepper soup is good,” Hambly turned from the desk and handed Clint the menu. Clint sat on the white couch to hide his relief at Jamisen’s voice in his ear, and scanned over the list. 

He felt vaguely nauseous even looking at the food choices, and he didn’t think he’d be keeping down anything he ate tonight. Still, there had to be something he could feed Hambly that he wouldn’t feel the tracker in. 

Steak, maybe? No, people chewed steak too much. A thick soup might be a possibility. 

Clint flipped to the desert section, and his eyes caught on an entry near the bottom.

“Fondue,” he said out loud, then glanced over at Hambly and gave the man a wicked smile. “Buy me a steak dinner, and I’ll let you lick chocolate off me later.”

Clint watched as Hambly’s eyes lit up. His stomach rolled over.

_Keep it together for the op, Barton,_ he told himself sternly. _No throwing up in the bathroom until_ after _you tag the mark._

Hambly ordered for them while Clint lounged on the couch. Looking for something to do with his hands he picked up the remote and turned on the TV, scanning through the available channels. It was a high-end hotel, so there were about a hundred. He paused at an episode of Supernanny, then forced himself to scroll on.

Hambly finished ordering for them and then tucked himself into the couch behind Clint. His hands came up to play with the planes of Clint’s chest, and the archer felt his muscles go tight before they loosened again.

He didn’t say anything as Hambly’s hands wandered down his belly, finally teasing with the edges of Clint’s belt buckle.

“We have half an hour until dinner,” the weapons-runner whispered into Clint’s ear. Clint hoped the way he shuddered felt attractive and not like he was repulsed. “I wonder how we can pass the time.”

Hambly’s hand began to work the buckle of Clint’s jeans. Desperately, Clint flipped the TV back to Supernanny.

“Seems like you have a few ideas,” Clint said, knowing his voice sounded hoarse. 

“Oh, I’m an idea guy,” Hambly agreed. He undid Clint’s buckle and popped the button on his jeans. “That’s why they pay me the big bucks.”

“Yeah?” Clint asked, rolling his hips. He looked over at Supernanny, remembering how Phil would relax when the show came on, his shoulders dipping minutely beneath his suit.

The image did what no amount of touching from Hambly could do. His dick twitched, and Hambly obviously felt it.

“Oh yeah,” Hambly agreed, his voice low in Clint’s ear. His chest was hard against Clint’s back, his hands rubbing over the front of Clint’s undone jeans. After a moment he reached inside and cupped Clint through his boxers.

“So, you here at the hotel on business, or pleasure?” Clint asked, arching into Hambly’s touch. He kept his eyes fixed resolutely on the television screen.

“Business,” Hambly said into his ear. He bit at the skin beneath Clint’s jaw. 

Clint shuddered. He also lost his erection. Supernanny wasn’t going to cut it. Closing his eyes, Clint dragged up every memory of Phil watching TV. S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters in New York had a lounge for the junior agents, but Phil never spent any time there. In New Mexico, though, there had been a TV room separate from the research division. Sometimes, if Clint was lucky, he would find Phil sitting on the black couch at two a.m. After the first night, Phil had invited him in. They would sit together, Phil’s hands resting lightly at his sides, the remote control on his lap.

Clint had fantasized every night about reaching over to pick up the remote control. He would say something to Phil, something about finding an actually good show to watch, and Phil would roll his eyes. Clint’s hand would go for the remote but he would brush Phil’s leg as he did. In his dreams, Phil would turn so Clint’s hand brushed his groin instead of his legs, and then Phil would roll into him. Clint would let out a startled breath, and Phil would grin at him. And then they would be kissing, Phil’s hand in Clint’s hair, Clint grabbing at his handler’s shoulders. 

The kiss would be hot and desperate, weeks - _months_ \- of pent-up yearning escaping all at once. Clint would moan into Phil’s mouth and Phil’s hands would tighten in his hair. And then Clint would slip a hand into Phil’s pants, or Phil would pull him onto his lap, or Phil would order Clint to suck him off, and either way Clint would end up pumping himself in his bunk alone at night, coming hard to the image of Phil Coulson’s cock in his mouth.

The image was hot enough to still work for him now, Hambly rubbing his hand over Clint’s dick inside his boxer shorts. Clint let his head fall back and he moaned, the sensation messing with the fantasy in his head. 

Hambly sucked a hickey on the side of Clint’s neck, then slid forwards, coming from behind Clint to wrap himself in front of him. Hambly kissed him again, wet and dirty, and then went to his knees in front of Clint on the couch.

“I don’t usually offer, but you look so fucking hot right now. I want to suck you off.”

Clint breathed in and out, forcing his eyes away from the TV for a moment, looking down at Hambly. The weapons-runner still had one hand in his jeans, rubbing at his dick, and Clint wanted so badly to kick the guy in the face that his leg twitched.

Hambly’s eyes darkened, obviously misreading Clint’s involuntary movement. He reached in to ease Clint’s still-hardening cock from his boxer shorts, and Clint closed his eyes and let his head thunk backwards onto the couch.

Jamisen was still watching. Phil was still in his ear. He could do this if he had to, but he promised himself he wouldn’t make a sound.

Hambly was a good dick-sucker, Clint had to give him that. When he could concentrate enough on his fantasies, when he could take himself away from this room and focus on the heat and pressure of Hambly’s mouth, then Clint could feel himself get hard enough to maybe get off.

It was a constantly struggle though, to keep himself into it, to take his mind away from where he was and who was doing his best to suck him off.

Fortunately for his continued sanity, Hambly room phone started to ring while he was still on his knees in front of Clint, tongued curled around the base of Clint’s dick.

The sudden noise startled them both, and Clint thanked whoever was on the other end as his dick immediately softened. Hambly would take it as the interruption, and not as a personal failing. Thank fuck.

With an irritated huff, Hambly rose almost gracefully from his knees and gave Clint a quick tongue-thrusting kiss before walking over to the phone and picking it up. 

“What?” he growled into the line, and Clint took the opportunity to tuck himself back together. He ran a hand through his hair and cursed low, then remembered that the Alpha team could hear him. He choked back the litany of self-recriminations he wanted to say, and stood up from the couch.

Hambly looked over when he saw Clint stand up, rolling his eyes at the phone. Clint smirked at him, then made a show of acting bored, and started checking out the mini-suite.

It still looked completely normal. Clint ran his hand over the various objects in the room, noting nothing that looked suspicious. He wandered over to the bathroom, turning on the lights but leaving the door ajar. He listened to Hambly on the phone. Mostly the man said “hmmm” and “yes” and “no” a lot. There wasn’t much information to glean.

The bathroom was pretty spotless, as well. Clint debated stashing a camera somewhere, but he doubted it would do any good. Hambly would keep all business away from his hotel room, if this was where he brought guys back for the night.

Hambly was just finishing on the phone when there was a knock at the door. Their food had arrived. Clint and Hambly sat on the couch in front of the glass table to eat. Hambly had ordered them both the red pepper soup, and Clint debated dropping the tracker in. It was too thin though, and Hambly would probably feel it.

After soup, they each had steaks. Clint’s was a beautifully cut t-bone, done just the way he liked it. It felt like a sin to have to chew without enjoying it, but he forced most of it down. He felt nauseous, but promised himself he would keep it together for another hour or so. While they ate, he worked at getting Hambly drunk. If he could get the weapons runner tipsy enough, he could bail out and drug him before planting the tracker. If the knock-out pills worked as well as Natasha said they would, Hambly would wake in the morning without suspecting a thing.

After every course, Clint would refill Hambly’s drink. He sipped at his own beer, but declined whenever Hambly offered him harder alcohol. He said it was a side-effect of being a bartender, and Hambly seemed to accept that excuse. 

By the time desert came, Hambly was pleasantly tipsy. Clint could feel his steak rolling around in his stomach, but he kept it down. He was starting to feel dirty, really horribly, disgustingly dirty, but he couldn’t quit just yet.

The fondue had been dropped off with the meal, and Clint took the lid off the gently simmering pot of chocolate while Hambly finished off the last of his vodka martini.

There were cut-up pieces of fruit and bread, and Clint dipped a piece of strawberry into the hot chocolate, turning his back so he could get the tracker from where he had stashed it in his pocket.

“You’re not allergic, are you?” he asked Hambly, thrusting the tracker deep into the strawberry. 

Hambly shook his head. Clint turned back and made a show of licking his fingers where the chocolate had dripped. Hambly’s eyes went dark. Clint popped the strawberry into his mouth, then crushed their mouths together, forcing Hambly to swallow so he could kiss Clint.

Clint felt the strawberry – and the tracker – slip down the man’s throat. He grinned, and Hambly took the opportunity to stick his tongue back into Clint’s mouth. Clint let him, feeling relieved that the drop had been made.

Hambly kept him on the couch for a few more minutes. They fed each other pieces of fruit dipped in chocolate, and Clint felt his stomach get more and more unsettled the longer dessert went on.

Hambly was obviously hard in his pants, and Clint was completely soft. If Hambly jumped him, Clint knew he wouldn’t be able to fake anything more tonight.

It was time to drug him, or call on Nat to get him out. Clint was debating which to do when Hambly reached around the couch and came up with a set of handcuffs.

“Feel like playing cops and robbers?” he grinned. 

Clint froze. His stomach rolled, and he had to swallow the vomit that rose up in his throat.

“That sounds like fun,” he forced himself to say.

The response on the comms was immediate.

“That’s the Get Out signal,” Phil’s voice was sudden and harsh in Clint’s ear. Clint felt his stomach drop, knowing he had been listening the entire time. “Get him the fuck out of there.”

Jamisen’s voice was almost overlapping Phil’s. “Natasha is calling now, Barton. Give her thirty seconds.”

Hambly was still grinning at him, waving the handcuffs a little. The urge to snap his neck and run was almost too strong to resist. Clint distracted himself by mapping it out, the angle and trajectory, the amount of force he would need.

“Sure,” Clint forced himself to grin, melting backwards into the couch. “Do you want to be the cop, or the robber?”

“Well,” Hambly eyed him, licking his lips, “maybe we should - “

The ring of Clint’s cell phone startled them both. Clint felt a surge of relief so strong he had to blink back the tears that threatened to spill out of his eyes.

He covered his blinking with an over-done eye roll.

“Sorry,” he said, extracting himself from the couch and reaching into his jacket for the cell phone. “That’s my friend’s ring-tone. She knows I’m on a date tonight. She wouldn’t call if she didn’t have to.”

Hambly frowned, but Clint smiled at him tightly and answered the phone.

“Yeah? What’s up?”

Nat’s voice was huge and panicked. Clint winced and pulled the phone back from his ear, knowing her sobbing would be audible to Hambly.

“Hey, hey – slow down. What happened? Are you okay?”

Clint turned as Nat stuttered out her cover story – a car accident, minor damage – and started collecting his stuff. Hambly watched, obviously unhappy with the interruption, but he made no move to stop him.

“It’s okay – hey, it’s okay. I’m coming now, alright? Where are you?”

Nat gave him an intersection fifteen minutes away if he walked. Clint reassured her he would be there and then hung up, turning back to Hambly with a sigh.

“Rain check?”

Hambly was obviously disappointed, but he didn’t move from the couch to stop him. Clint went forward and kissed him again, making the movement regretful and like he definitely wanted to do it again. 

Maybe he was better at this acting thing than he thought. 

“Tomorrow, maybe?” Clint asked him, still kissing his mouth. “How long are you in town?”

“A few more nights, probably two,” Hambly admitted, tilting up his head to better angle the kiss. “You working again tomorrow?”

Clint mentally reviewed the working schedule Jamisen and Kumar had created for him. “Yeah. No bar shift though, just ten to four at the valet desk.”

“Alright then,” Hambly agreed, yanking Clint down by his shoulders for one last hard kiss. “I’ll pick you up after your shift.”

Clint frowned at him. “I can meet you later. I’m sure you have important stuff to get to during the day.”

Hambly shrugged. “I did most of my deals today, tomorrow I just have move the merchandise around. I should be done by three. Four, by the latest.”

“Okay, then,” Clint said, filing that away. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Clint winked at him and then turned around to leave. His shoulders itched as he walked away from the weapons-runner, sure the man was going to do something at the last second. Pull a knife on him, or just shoot him in the back.

“I got eyes on him,” Jamisen said in his ear. Maybe he could see how tight Clint’s shoulders had gotten. “He’s just sitting there. You’re good.”

Clint couldn’t nod, but he hoped his sigh of appreciation got picked up by the comm.

He exited the room without incident, then waited for the elevator like a regular human being instead of just heading to the roof like he wanted to.

He made a show of checking his cell phone as he got onto the elevator, ostentatiously looking for a text message from Nat about the car accident. He frowned as if he saw something there, then called her back. 

Nat answered on the first ring, and together they stayed in character as Clint exited the hotel. With the phone pressed to his ear, Clint hurried past guests and the occasional security guard. He left via the front doors and headed up the street, walking in the direction of Nat’s “accident”. 

There really were flashing lights at the intersection, Clint realized as he got closer. He got to the road and found Nat in a tearful discussion with a police officer, standing beside a two-year old Volvo that had obviously blown a tire and crashed into a telephone pole.

Nat was unharmed and the car was a disaster, but hardly a write-off. Together they navigated the police officer’s questions and organized a tow-truck.

Nat stayed resolutely in character. She was always fun to watch when she committed herself to a role. Clint wondered what she had been doing while he played cock-tease to Hambly, if she waited until he called to blow out the tire and arrange for the “accident”.

It kept his mind from circling back to the past two hours, but only for a little while. After about twenty minutes, Clint’s hands started to shake.

The evening was catching up to him. He could feel Hambly on his mouth and on his dick. He felt so dirty and dragged down. He looked at the cops investigating the scene, and wondered how they could stand to be in the same space as him. He must reek of Hambly’s room, chocolate and steak and red-pepper soup, and something else, something more sinister.

His stomach rolled, and Clint thrust his hands into his jacket to keep the shaking from being obvious to the police. He knew Nat had seen, and he gave her a short sharp headshake when she frowned at him. 

Clint kept it together for as long as he could, but as soon as the officer turned, Clint slipped away from the scene. He made it to a patch of shadow, and then ran back to Jamisen’s hotel.

 

~ ~ ~ 

 

Nat found him forty minutes later.

Clint had thought about going back to the room. He could fake it. He’d done it dozens of times before. Hold his head high and smirk at people, dare them to say something. But he knew false bluster wasn’t going to fool Phil, and probably not Jamisen or Kumar, either. 

They would take one look at him and know he hated this. Feeling like this. And then they would try to take him off the op. 

And as much as Clint really, _really_ hated feeling this way, dirty and used and so fucking tired it wasn’t even funny, he didn’t want to be shuffled off into some dark corner. He wanted to do his _job_. And sometimes his job meant letting some ass-face suck on his dick for a while, and Clint pretending he liked it.

His hands were shaking. He stank of Hambly’s room, the air freshener the hotel used, the chocolate on his breath. He had to get rid of this feeling. Needed to feel _clean_ before he could go up there and face them.

Face Phil.

So Clint took his room card and went down instead of up, heading into the bowels of the cheap hotel. There was always a workout room in these places, and workout rooms meant showers.

It didn’t take him long to find it – a dingy, slimy, tiled hotel shower with a slopped concrete floor and lopsided drain. It was perfect.

Clint turned the water on as hot as it would go and stepped inside. He dropped his jacket and his shoes, but didn’t even try to remove the rest of his clothing. His hands were shaking so bad, he almost couldn’t get the comm out of his ear before he stepped under the spray.

Clint stood there and let the water pound over him. It may have been a cheap hotel, but they had good water pressure. In an instant he was soaked, clothes hanging heavy and wet off his shoulders. After soaking it in, Clint reached for his belt, thinking maybe now he could get his clothes off. But even the incessant spray couldn’t keep the sense memories from overwhelming him the instant his fingers touched the buckle.

Hambly’s hands on the front of his jeans, his fingers working at Clint’s belt. Pulling down the zipper, slipping his hand inside …

Clint jerked once, violently, and smashed the back of his head into the grimy shower wall. It felt good, like a sensory re-set, so he did it again. He was going to do it a third time when a hand reached out and caught the back of his head.

Clint spun and slid, thrown off balance and slipping on the concrete floor in his wet socks. But even as he turned, he recognized the presence at his side. He was lowering his guard when Natasha hit him.

She punched him hard in the chest with her left hand, keeping her right against the back of his head. Cradling him and hitting him at the same time.

“Idiot,” she said, her voice cold and hard and very Russian. “Stop this. You have done enough brain damage to yourself tonight, I think.”

Clint felt off-balance and dizzy. The too-hot water and the pain in the back of his head, mixed with the rising sense of nausea in his throat, made him feel unglued.

Still, he knew Natasha must be really fucking pissed at him if her Russian was showing.

“How is hitting me supposed to help?” Clint tried to say, but the nausea was too much. 

His stomach roiled. Clint leaned over and felt everything bubbling up. He dropped to his hands and knees, making it just as his stomach heaved. The rough concrete bit into his palms as he puked in the shower, half-chewed steak and bits of mashed fruit heaving up from his stomach to spill onto the concrete floor. The stench mixed with the pounding water was too much for him, and he threw up again.

Nat waited while he emptied everything he could, keeping her hand on the back of his neck. 

When he was finally finished, Clint slumped forward, head resting on the rough concrete. The drain was too large, most of the food had washed away, but he still felt disgusting.

“Up, small child,” Nat said to him, and Clint groaned because no – he didn’t want to move. He wanted to stay there until he drowned.

“Up,” Nat said again, and this time she was smiling, he could tell. Clint must have said that last part out loud.

He struggled to his feet, bracing his hand against the wall when the dizziness rose over him again. Nat pulled the soaking shirt over his head while he steadied himself, then put business-like hands on his belt and began to undress him. 

Clint focused on the feel of her, calm and steady. He tried to overlap his sense-memories of Hambly doing this with Natasha. It helped, a little. It got him through the undressing, at least.

Once she had him buck-ass nude, Natasha let him stand under the shower on his own two feet. She ducked out for a moment while he turned his head up to the spray and closed his eyes, letting everything flow out of him. Knowing Nat had his back, Clint could allow himself this – he let his world narrow to the heat of the spray, the feel of water on his skin. 

She came back too soon, obviously wary about leaving him alone for long. Clint looked down and saw she had stripped her clothes off as well, walking back into the small shower without an ounce of self-consciousness. 

Clint had seen Nat naked enough times that he wasn’t surprised by anything, but her naked body was still a beautiful thing to see. Like art, soft and curving. And dangerous. 

It felt like a gift, to see her like this. Every time. 

Nat smiled at him, amused. Clint saw she had a bottle of shampoo and a bottle of conditioner in one hand, and a rough bar of soap in the other.

Grateful, he reached out to take the soap from her. Natasha shooed his hands away. She pushed at him, turning him around. Clint ducked his head under the spray and let Natasha run the soap over him, the rough edges scraping on his skin.

It felt glorious. She scrubbed hard, skirting the edge of painful. Clint felt his showers relax, his thighs melt. He had to catch his hand on the wall of the shower just to stay upright, arching his back to let Natasha scrub down his spine.

Everything swirled away down the drain. Dirt and scent and the memory of Hambly’s touch. It all went down, washed away by water and soap and the touch of Natasha on his skin.

By the time she was finished, Clint was practically boneless. She had scrubbed him from the edges of his hair to the bottom of his heels, picking up each foot to wash between his toes. She had even washed his groin, her touch clinical but still somehow personal. 

Intimate, without being sexual. Comforting, but never romantic. Clint didn’t have words for what Natasha was to him, but having her naked with him in the shower, washing him from head to toe – that came close.

After the soap, Nat bent him over and rubbed first the shampoo and then the conditioner through his hair. Clint didn’t bother trying to resist, just let her do as she liked. It felt good. It felt _clean_.

When she had finished, Clint’s skin was pink and felt fresh, his hair was dripping and out of his eyes. He felt almost human, again.

Nat stepped out of the shower first, drying herself off while Clint dripped behind the grimy curtain. When she handed him a fluffy towel, obviously not one from their cheap hotel, Clint stepped out after her.

And stopped.

Phil stood in the doorway, his back towards them, facing the entrance to the small workout room. Clint turned to glare at Nat, but she shrugged back, unrepentant. Clint had to admit that he should have realized she would have someone guarding their back if she was going to jump naked into the shower with him. 

He thought he’d have more time before facing Phil, though. He thought Nat would have granted him that.

Nat dried beside him in silence. She wrapped the towel around herself when she was done, and slipped quietly to the doorway. She paused beside Phil for a moment and said a quiet word that Clint couldn’t hear, and then she left.

She probably wasn’t going further than the next corridor over. Nat understood the finer points of paranoia.

Clint finished drying himself and then looked at the pile of dirty, soaking clothes on the grimy concrete floor. No way in hell was he putting those back on. Instead he looped the towel around his waist much like Natasha had done, and looked over at Phil.

His handler had turned a little. One eye watched the doorway, while the other was trained on Clint. When Clint looked up, Phil met his eyes.

Clint belatedly realized he had braced himself. Phil had seen him in a lot of bad situations, and being mindfucked and compromised was on the top of his Personal Hell list. But he hadn’t seen him like this in a very long time. 

Too tired to pretend. Too human.

Too broken.

The last time Clint had felt this fucked up was when Phil had first brought him into S.H.I.E.L.D. The agent had tracked him during those last few desperate months in Brazil, when Clint had been at the end of his rope and too tired to realize it. Too exhausted to understand the small, easily overlooked man in the black suit was more dangerous than the killers he had spent three weeks hunting.

It had taken a bullet and a knife wound to make Clint abruptly aware of that fact. When he had, Clint had felt ashamed. Not because he had overlooked the man, because that was practically Phil’s superpower, but because it had hurt to stand next to someone that obviously _good_ and not feel like a monster, inside.

It hurt now, too. 

Some of that must have shown on his face, which testified to how messed up he was at the moment, because Phil was at his side in an instant.

Surprised, Clint backed up. His feet tangled in the edge of the towel and he flailed. Phil helped by hooking an ankle around Clint’s knee and grabbing at his shoulders with both hands. Carefully, almost gently, Phil lowered them both to the floor. It was cold, grimy tile, but Phil didn’t seem to care.

Clint sat on the floor, his towel pooled in his lap, and stared at Phil. The older agent just looked at him, his face expressionless.

Clint blushed and shifted, moving to get up. God, he was pathetic, staring at Phil like a love-sick puppy. He was going to escape back to his room and they could never talk about this again.

But Phil surprised him by stopping him with one hand on his shoulder. Clint looked at the hand, then followed it up to Phil’s face. It was still careful, but there was the tiniest hint of a smile lingering around the edges of his upper lip.

Clint sucked in a breath, wondering, and then Phil let go of his shoulder and opened his arms.

Clint blinked. 

They didn’t _do_ physical contact. In part because Phil always seemed so untouchable, but also because Clint had a tendency to react badly. Phil obviously knew this, if he remembered the way Clint had almost broken his arm after the incident in Milan.

As they got to know each another better, Clint used goofing off on the comms and small paper missiles between missions to distract himself from all the ways he really _really_ wanted Phil to touch him.

Clint hadn’t been brave enough to offer, before. As in all things, Phil was better at being a human being that he was.

Phil was still sitting there, arms open, quietly patient. He made the offer, and waited for Clint to decide what to do with it.

Clint knew he could walk away from this. He could stand and exit this grimy room, and Natasha would probably hit him again, but she would understand, too. She would get how frightening this could be, to be offered something like this. Simple comfort, and maybe something more.

Clint didn’t want to walk away. He didn’t want to be a coward forever.

He leaned forward into those arms. Clint moved slowly, at first, but then Phil reached around and tugged him closer, and Clint practically melted into his chest.

Phil was strong, even with the still-healing chest wound, and steady. Always steady. His hands never shook, his breathing never hitched. He just took Clint in and held him close. 

It was too much. Clint buried his face in Phil’s chest, and tucked his nose in the space between Phil’s chin and his neck. He breathed in deep, shaking breaths, taking in the scent of aftershave and gunpowder that always characterized Phil Coulson. 

Safe in Phil’s arms, weakened by Natasha’s care, the past few months came crashing back on him. New Mexico and the stress of being in one place for too long. Seeing Phil day in and day out, wanting so badly and being unable to touch. Then the tesseract and Loki. Trapped in his own head while Loki played with his mind. Gave him new orders and watched with a smile as Clint did his job and did it well. 

As well as he ever had for Fury.

For Phil. 

Coming back to himself, Nat’s reboot of his brain, and facing Loki in the heat of battle. Looking up from that to realize Captain America was talking to him, telling him Phil was dead.

_Believing_ that, whole-heartedly, because when had he ever gotten anything he wanted? And he had so badly for this to be a dream, for Phil to come back alive. 

And then Fury and the conference room, and the shock of it all like another reset to his system. Another kick to the head.

He shouldn’t be on this op. He should have been locked up in medical, in psych, with big padded walls and magnetic locks. He wasn’t ready to be here. He was going to fuck up, had already fucked up, and they were all going to die. Jamisen and Kumar and Jones. Nat and Phil. Everyone. It was his fault. 

It was all his fault.

Clint realized he was crying against Phil’s chest, deep ragged sobs that brought everything up. It was too much like vomiting on the shower floor, this emotional nausea. He wasn’t even sure what he was saying anymore, what he was confessing into Phil’s chest. Things he hadn’t told anyone, not even Nat. Things he would never tell S.H.I.E.L.D.

Things he would never tell Phil, if he were conscious about what his mouth was saying, because he loved Phil and Phil didn’t deserve this shit. Phil was better than this.

Phil was better than him. Always had been and always would be.

Ever since that first day, standing in the rain, looking so clean and so good. Offering Clint a way out.

And Phil just held him, arms tight around Clint’s back. He rocked him side to side gently, like a child, and murmured nonsense into Clint’s ear as he talked. Clint coughed, tears clogging his throat, and clenched his hands in Phil’s shirt. 

“I’ve got you, Clint. I’m here. I didn’t die. I’m so sorry, Clint. I’ve got you. You’re safe here. You aren’t worthless. Never that. I’m so sorry, Clint. I’ve got you.”

The words were soft and so fucking sweet. Clint shuddered and tried to burrow his way inside Phil’s chest. Close enough that all he could hear was Phil’s heartbeat under his head and Phil’s voice in his ear.

After a few minutes, Clint realized he had stopped crying. Phil was still holding him, rocking them gently, and his shirt was soaked by Clint’s tears and his wet hair. There was snot on his shoulder, and oh god, he was pathetic.

He tried to shift a little, embarrassed, but Phil’s arms only tightened around him. “Hush,” Phil said, sharp and gentle at the same time. “Wait, Clint, wait.” He rocked him for a minute more.

Clint wanted him to stop. This felt too good. He shouldn’t – 

But Phil interrupted his train of thought. “Let me hold you and feel useful for a moment.”

That stopped him, like Phil knew it would. The bastard. Clint coughed and tried to wipe at his snotty face, which was difficult with Phil practically smothering him against his chest. 

He hoped his voice didn’t sound as wrecked as it probably did. 

“You’re never useless.”

Phil’s arms tightened again, then relaxed a little. He moved his head so it sat atop Clint’s own, his chin digging into Clint’s forehead.

“I felt pretty useless today. I sent you in to a dangerous situation, with a fucked-up mark, knowing full well that he was going to – “ Phil’s voice deepened into a growl, “- going to _touch_ you. And I was going to have to let him.”

His arms tightened again, and Phil bent his head down, lips brushing against Clint’s ear. “The entire time you were in there, all I was imaging was the various ways I am going to hurt that man. I alphabetized them, with roman numerical subsections. And when this op is over I will take great, visceral pleasure, in making him suffer through each and every one of them.”

Clint shivered. 

He had never heard Phil this way before. Possessive.

“You always invent ways to hurt people who look at me funny on the job?” he asked, jokingly.

“Yes,” Phil growled again, pulling Clint closer. He rested his head on Clint’s forehead. “And not just on the job. Didn’t you ever wonder what happened to Rob in R&D?”

Clint had to think for a moment. “Rob was a dick.”

Phil nodded, as if he completely agreed with him. As if he hadn’t said, _”These people are your teammates, Barton. Try to avoid physical injury, please”_ a dozen times to him over the years.

“I’m kind of a dick, too,” Clint tried, even though he wasn’t sure why he was defending the man. Rob had been a _giant_ dick. He thought it was funny to grab Clint’s ass and make suggestive remarks about his archery equipment. 

Clint had grinned and born it, because that’s what you did when you weren’t ready to leave a place yet, and guys would be guys. But he hadn’t complained when Rob had been suddenly transferred out of the country.

He had never looked into why, though.

Clint leaned back until he could stare Phil in the face. The normally unruffled agent’s lips were red, his cheeks a little flushed. 

Clint stared at him. He was the most beautiful thing Clint had ever seen.

He might have that that last bit out loud. Phil blushed.

“How long have you felt like this?” Clint asked, the words slipping out before he could take them back.

Phil raised one eyebrow, but he didn’t move, his arms still tight around Clint’s back.

“Longer than I’m proud enough to admit,” he said, sounding sheepish. “Since I first brought you in. Since before that, maybe. Since Barcelona.”

Clint blinked at him. “You were tracking me in Barcelona?” he asked, cringing at the way his voice broke.

Barcelona had been … bad. But also good. Clint had made some fucking awesome shots in Barcelona.

Phil met his gaze. “You were beautiful in Barcelona. First time I saw you with a bow. S.H.I.E.L.D. was tracking the ghost-sniper. I only got a seconds glance, but it was enough. I took over your recruitment.”

“And followed me to South America,” Clint remembered. He looked away. “Things got bad in South America.”

Phil’s arms tightened again. Clint gave up and leaned back into Phil’s arms, resting his head on Phil’s chest, still careful of his wound.

“Yes,” Phil agreed. His voice dipped lower. “I had lists for those people, too, but you mostly took care of them.” He shook his head. “That’s why I knew we had to bring you in. You deserved so much better – people who would respect you, work with you. Treat you as an equal. Give you the respect you deserve.”

Clint had to blink at Phil’s words. Phil believed everything he was saying. Clint had never heard him speak this way before, had never guessed that Phil felt this way about him. 

He wanted to soak it up, but – “If you felt that way, why didn’t you say something? God, Phil. I’ve wanted you for so long, you could have – “

He could almost feel Phil’s eyebrow. 

“What – abused your trust? I told you the day I brought you in that S.H.I.E.L.D. was the good guys. We … I …” He broke off, unexpectedly tongue-tied. 

He paused for a moment, obviously gathering his thoughts. When he spoke again, his voice was low and sincere.

“You’d been through so much, Clint. I didn’t want to take the chance you’d read me wrong. I needed you to understand that being with me, the way I wanted, wasn’t a prerequisite for staying with S.H.I.E.L.D. I didn’t want to force you into anything.”

“You wouldn’t have,” Clint argued.

“I’m not worried about that _now_ ,” Phil said, his voice holding a smile. “But then? I wasn’t going to risk it.”

Clint had to force himself to stop and think back. He hated to say that Phil was right, but maybe Milan proved he hadn’t been ready, then. But if that were true, did Hambly prove he wasn’t ready now?

Fuck that, Clint wanted to be ready. He wanted this. He had wanted this for a long time, now. 

“I want this,” Clint forced himself to say. It was hard to confess the words, but easier when he could say them to Phil’s chest rather than Phil himself. “I want this now. But Phil –” He broke off, choking a little on the words. He had to say this right. Phil had to understand.

“I’m a little – a little fucked up. I mean, I can’t – I’ll _try_ , I’ll try so hard, but you’ll probably have to kick me in the head a little. A few times. And not figuratively.”

He could feel Phil’s smile against his forehead. “I think I have a pretty good handle on your issues, Barton. And I’m not without an element of paranoia and hyper-vigilance, myself. But above everything else, I trust you. I have faith we can work out the rest. Together.”

Faith. 

Clint shivered.

He wanted to believe. And if Phil thought they could do it, well. Clint relaxed more against his arms, sinking forward into Phil’s chest.

Well, then maybe they had a chance. Together.

 

~ ~ ~

 

Natasha was waiting for them when they finally gathered themselves and got up from the shower room floor. She was standing at the intersection of the next corridor, her back to the single entry to the workout room. As they approached she turned around, graceful as always, and looked at them over her shoulder.

She eyed Clint, sizing him up, taking in his bruised expression and the way Phil had his arm around Clint’s waist. When she smiled, Clint knew it was with relief.

He smiled back. Nat rolled her eyes at him, her way of saying _finally_. Clint had to chuckle because, yeah. Apparently.

They walked up to the room together, the three of them, avoiding the elevators. They were cold by the time they reached their door, Clint and Nat in their towels and Phil in his wet suit. Phil opened the door, and they did a subtle check before walking in. Jamisen was at the computer bank, but he did nothing more than raise an eyebrow at them as they walked in. Kumar and Watson should have been in, but they were probably in the second bedroom, asleep with the door closed. 

Phil led them to the first bedroom, stepping aside to let Clint and Nat follow him into the room. 

They changed in silence, each getting into their most comfortable sleepwear. Nat wore her spider pyjamas again, and Phil put on the soft Rangers t-shirt he liked to sleep in. Clint had his cotton pants and the no-sleeves shirt Phil had bought for him in Atlanta, the one with a hawk on the front. 

Like the night before, Clint and Nat left the bed for Phil. Unlike the night before, Phil held up the covers for them both to join him.

They hesitated a moment, both of them. Then Clint looked at Nat, and Nat looked back, and raised her eyebrows as if to say _So long as it's okay with you?_. Clint shrugged and Phil just waited, patient, holding the covers up.

Clint and Nat crawled into bed, and Phil arranged them as he liked. Clint ended up sandwiched between Phil and Nat, his handler spooning him from behind and Nat protecting him from the front. Like Phil and Nat were protecting him from more than HYDRA, like they were keeping him safe from himself.

Clint closed his eyes and slept deep that night, the ghost of Phil’s breath on the back of his neck a promise, the touch of Natasha in front of him a guard. 

 

~ ~ ~ 

 

In the morning, there was work to do.

Phil, for once, was the first one up. Nat and Clint both uncharacteristically slept in. Phil was up, dressed, and had coffee brewing by the time they stumbled out into the main room. 

Jamisen was still asleep when they got up, but Kumar and Watson were both awake. They sat together on the uncomfortable middle couch and chatted quietly about the mission while Clint and Nat got themselves caffeinated.

After a few minutes Jamisen came out, also in search of coffee, and they all took turns in the shower.

Clint waved his turn aside, something that made even Kumar look up. But he felt good this morning, clean, and the slight smile on Phil’s face whenever they made eye contact kept him feeling grounded.

By eight a.m., they were sitting around the bank of computers, letting Jamisen walk them through the day’s plan.

“Okay, we got a lot of really valuable intel yesterday,” the agent started. He looked around the room at each of their faces equally, neither resting on nor excluding Clint. 

“We know that Hambly spent most of his day going back and forth from the hotel to a secondary location. Our Beta team followed, but lost him quickly. We think, going by the manner of his appearance and disappearance and the readings the Beta team took, that HYDRA has developed some kind of cloaking technology.”

It wasn’t news to anyone around the table, but it still felt weird to hear. _This_ , Clint thought, _is apparently my life, now._

“We’re hoping they’ve reversed engineered it from the Chitauri, even though there has been no evidence that those aliens could cloak. If it’s not from the Chitauri, it means HYDRA either have an alternative source of alien-inspired tech, or their R&D division is just that fucking good. Either way, our secondary target is now that technology. They may have a way to track the tech that we don’t know about, but either way S.H.I.E.L.D. wants a piece of it. And I don’t have to tell you that Tony Stark has been literally begging in my ear all morning to bring me back a shiny piece for him to play with.”

Everyone chuckled. 

Jamisen went on. “That being said, our primary target is still the weapons themselves. Now, Agent Coulson has done a great job of negotiating our whitewash team a slice of the pie –” Jamisen nodded at Phil, “– and that should get us to the weapons site this afternoon. Intel tells us the final negotiations will take place at the hotel this morning and be wrapped up at the weapons depot site itself by noon. So no matter what, by the end of the day we’ll know where the weapons are stashed.”

Jamisen shook his head. “But that isn’t good enough. We aren’t the only ones who are looking for this site. Naruko, Michelmas, and Father Roni would all love to grab what they could and run. It’s a lot cheaper than dealing with Hambly, though they’d lose the prospect of future business. We think that promise of eventual bonuses will hold everyone in check when they get to the depot, but it means there will be a lot of hired guns on site. So we’ll have Hambly’s people there, plus the Big Three and their thugs. If we bring S.H.I.E.L.D. in then, we’d have a lot of fire power against us.”

“Plus,” Jamisen went on, nodding at Clint, “Barton is right. We don’t want to ally these guys against S.H.I.E.L.D. We have enough to deal with at present. We’d prefer to leave this conference with each individual member of the Big Three sure that the other one has screwed them over, and we’d love for Hambly to take the fall. If it all goes right, HYDRA will never even know we were here. So here’s the plan.

“Because of Barton’s efforts, we now have a tracker on Hambly. We suspect he will make one final trip to the depot site this morning. Our Beta team will track him in. Once the site has been identified, and we have a few locations in mind, S.H.I.E.L.D. will move in. Barton, I want you on that op. Phil will have to stay with Hambly, and Romanov, I think you will as well. You’re in pretty tight with Roni. Watson, I want you on the roof guarding their exits. Keep alert for any changes that may indicate our cover is blown.

“Tensions are tight right now because we managed to successfully frame Naruko for Woo. That means everyone will be on edge. What I want us to do is clear that depot after Hambly leaves, but before he gets back with the entourage in tow.”

Jamisen paused for a moment and leaned forward, placing his palms on the cheap hotel table. He looked up and met each of their eyes, his face serious.

“When they open the doors, I want that depot to be empty and Hambly to take the blame for it. I want everyone to think that someone else has gotten away with the goods. Natasha, your job will be to frame Roni for it. We have Woo on Naruko. Phil, you’re to point fingers at Hambly himself. Use Barton if you have to, say that Hambly was indiscreet.

“No one will be looking at Michelmas, which will fester in their minds later. If this all goes to plan, no shots will be fired. Everyone will turn on each other and leave. We have enough on each of them to pick apart their empires later, or pass the information off to the A.T.F. or someone else once the threat of alien-jacked weapons are off the table.”

Jamisen leaned back again, his point made. “Phil, I want you in full body-armour. Under the suit, nothing flashy. Hambly knows you’re an outsider on this, and he may ping you for it. Be prepared. Barton, that’s one reason I want you with a good line on the meeting place. Soon as we identify the depot, I want you on site and in a tree somewhere. I don’t care where, pick your spot.”

Jamisen looked around the room. “Kumar, you’re on communications like usual. Keep alert to the chatter. Worst case scenario is Hambly doesn’t go to the depot this a.m. If that happens, we’ll have to move in on some of the potential targets and see if we can flush him out. I don’t want to go there, that’s where it gets messy, but be prepared for the possibilities. Worst, _worst_ case scenario, we don’t find the depot at all until Phil and Romanov walk into it. In which case, we’ll just have to go with the flow.”

He met everyone’s eyes again. “Everyone got that? Any questions?”

Clint glanced around the room. His part was fairly clear. Kumar and Watson had a few questions, though, and they spent the next ten minutes refining details. Then, Kumar took over at the computers and went over the specs they had on the five potential sites the Beta team had identified as possible depot-points. Each site had been protected from satellite view by natural formations or good use of cover, so it was hard to narrow down which site the weapons were probably stashed at. 

Clint had a favourite – the warehouse in the foothills, twenty-five minutes away if you drove fast. The warehouse was protected from satellite imaging by a few perfectly-situated overhangs and some dense trees, but there was a sizable clearing on the ground in front of it. The clearing was being used at the moment as a make-shift parking lot, which meant inside the warehouse was probably empty. 

Nat agreed with him that it was likely, but she also liked the potential of an urban offload site in the northern half of the city. It was a cargo container depot with lots of traffic and confusion. Clint admitted it was a possibility, but it would mean a lot of difficult shots crouched on the roof of a cargo container. He would much rather be perched in a tree.

Nat made the requisite bird joke and they fell to infighting before Phil, obviously trying not to smile, stopped them.

The good news was that because he was going to the depot site, Clint didn’t have to dress up and play valet for the morning. He called in to maintain his cover and used the same story Natasha had the night before. After assuring his boss he would definitely be in to work tomorrow – Nat smirked at him as he lied – he hung up the phone.

He felt extra relieved that he hadn’t shown up for this shift when the Beta team reported Hambly had stopped in at the reception desk that morning and asked about him. 

Clint had paused when the report came over their comms, but then went back to methodically checking his gear. Still, he could feel Phil’s eyes on him, and after a moment he gave in and looked up. Phil’s look wasn’t censured, and Clint could easily read the worry and relief there. He remembered what Phil had said about his alphabetized list of tortures invented just for Hambly, and smiled.

Phil smiled back with an edge to his grin that said he was thinking the same. Nat rolled her eyes at both of them, but Clint could tell she was pleased.

It was strange, Clint thought as he finished getting ready, how easy he felt with Phil this morning. They hadn’t really said anything last night, and no vaulting declarations had been made, but something had obviously been settled between them.

Maybe it was the mutual acknowledgement that they were going to give this a chance. Clint liked the idea of that. It seemed easier to think about the possibility, this morning. He felt settled inside his head, relaxed. It could have been the emotional after effects of breaking down the way he had, or perhaps it was simply the way Phil had held him. Phil had understood, as much as Clint could expect him to, and he hadn’t freaked out.

He hadn’t left.

So they could do this. They could try - _this_. Because they were in it together, and hey, they _did_ have the highest ratio of successfully completed missions in S.H.I.E.L.D. history. 

Well, the two of them did together. With Natasha as a third, they pretty much wrecked the grade curve.

Good thing she seemed to be on their side.

Phil and Nat left the hotel room first. In accordance with Jamisen’s instructions, Phil had outfitted himself in full battle armour. Not the flashy one with the O-ring Clint had seen in the armoury, though he knew Phil had a suit of the stuff, but a simple, black, fitted body armour that Tony had improved upon once he’d come onto the Avengers Initiative as a consultant.

It fit well under the suit, hardly noticeable even to Clint’s gaze. And it would stop energy and projectile weapons and turn the handle of a thrown knife.

It wouldn’t do much against the magical staff of a crazed god, but then, what could?

It was harder than it should have been to watch Phil suit up and walk towards the door with Natasha. Even knowing that she would watch his back, Clint had to clench his fingers tight at his side to keep himself from reaching out when Phil left. Phil met his eyes once over the threshold, giving Clint a brief look of understanding. To Clint, it felt like Phil was promising to do his best to come back. Clint knew that was all he was going to get. All he was _ever_ going to get, because it wasn’t like this was the last time Phil was going to head to an op like this. He understood for the first time that Phil must have felt this way hundreds of times before, watching Clint leave for a mission.

_I love you,_ he wanted to say. He felt like it should have been said.

But it wasn’t the place or the time to say it. So Clint held his eyes when they rested on his, and tried to project the same understanding and confidence back. 

Of course Phil would do his best to come back alive. He had Clint to come back to now.

Clint paced the hotel room after Phil and Nat had left. He listened to the Beta team’s chatter and went over the aerial photography of the five potential sites. He chose nests at each location, then went back and looked at secondary and tertiary possibilities. He listened to Watson and kept an ear on Phil and Nat, as well. So far, everything was proceeding as planned.

Then finally, _finally_ , the Beta team sent word that Hambly was on the move. After checking in regarding Clint, he had spent the morning making rounds at the conference, taking in a few extra selling points from each of the Big Three and Phil. He gave them mostly noncommittal answers, but left each feeling they would get the biggest slice of the weapons distribution. Then he left the hotel and called for his car.

One of the valets brought it for his driver, and Clint listened with one foot out the door as Beta team watched Hambly climb in. The tracker was still reading loud and clear, and had throughout the night even with the interference from Hambly’s room. 

It was working.

The tracker shifted on their GPS display of the city. Clint watched as it sped away from the hotel. Mentally he started scratching off potential sites as the tracker headed east. He got confused for a moment as it circled around an intersection, then reoriented himself as Hambly went north. 

_Good_ , Clint thought when it became clear that Hambly was heading for the warehouse in the woods. _Trees over cargo containers, it is._

He left with Jamisen immediately. The lead agent drove them speedily through the back roads to the abandoned warehouse site. Clint focused on not tapping his toes as Jamisen drove in and out of traffic. Phil was faster behind the wheel, but that was because Phil had serious speed issues and liked to pretend he didn’t.

Jamisen didn’t try to small talk him, at least, which was a relief. They both kept their focus on the road and the ongoing communication in their ears.

Phil and Nat were doing their part. Watson had eyes on their Alpha team, and no one appeared compromised. Clint told himself over and over again that she was the second-best sniper in S.H.I.E.L.D.

It mostly helped.

Finally, they turned off the main intersection and onto a smaller local highway. From there it was only a three-minute drive to the dirt road that led to the warehouse. Clint and Jamisen met the Beta team at the outside edge of the clearing that they had identified as their strike point. There were six of them, with ten additional S.H.I.E.L.D. agents as backup.

Woo was lead on the Beta team, and Clint didn’t have the heart to wish he hadn’t volunteered to step out of cover and assist him now. What had happened with Hambly after had been his own fault, and maybe things with Phil wouldn’t have gotten this far if he hadn’t left his perch to help Woo.

Woo, for his part, met Clint’s eyes and gave him a nod when Clint stepped out of the car. It was a quiet acknowledgement that Clint had done his best to help him in a time of need, and a nice gesture. Clint wondered if he had made a friend.

Jamisen let him stay and say his hellos for only a few minutes before nodding at him to get into position. Clint sprinted gratefully away and started scaling trees. 

He approached the warehouse by treetop. The pines and maples in this part of the Rockies were old, and more than up to holding his weight. There was a fairly good top wind going, and the branches were already swaying quite a bit on their own. It wasn’t difficult to sneak into position.

Once he could see the warehouse, Clint spent a few minutes surveying from different possible nests. He watched as Hambly drove up to the front doors and exited with his driver. His current tree didn’t give him enough coverage of the front entranceway, but moving would sacrifice his view of the cargo doors. 

It took him another five minutes of solid searching to find the best possible compromise – a beautiful oak set back from the warehouse, far enough away that Hambly wouldn’t be concerned about conventional snipers. From this position Clint could see the front door and the cargo door both, and he had eyes on the driveway to boot. 

Once he was in position, Clint radioed in to Jamisen. The Beta team had gone over the warehouse with every mode of stealth surveillance they owned, but it appeared the same dampening field was in use here as back at the hotel. They couldn’t get much from a distance. They’d have to go in to find out what was hidden inside.

As per Jamisen’s plan, everyone waited until Hambly had walked back out to his car and left. It took a while, and the sun was edging high in the sky by the time he finally peeled out back to the hotel. They hadn’t known what he was doing in the warehouse, but his tracker had paced for a while on the top floor. 

Jamisen gave the strike team the order to head in.

Clint watched through the trees as the sixteen agents made their way towards the warehouse. It felt good to be up high again. He watched as the agents moved in, sneaky and silent, and noticed that he hands weren’t shaking at all.

Huh.

Clint remembered the feeling of almost-panic he had the last time he’d been up high like this, watching Phil through the scope of his rifle across from the hotel. Had that only been two days ago? He had felt faintly nauseous then. The memories of his actions under Loki’s control too close to the surface.

He felt better now. More settled. 

It could the adrenalin, he rationalized. He was in on an op now, not just a stake-out. This was more like what it was during the Battle of New York, when he’d been too active to pay attention to how he was feeling. 

But then he’d been too busy to notice what his hands were doing. Now he did. 

And he was still okay.

He was going to have to up and face the facts. It wasn’t the adrenalin, and it wasn’t the situation. Clint felt better because he’d confronted some his demons during the past few days. Not all of them, and they weren’t dealt with so much as muffled, but as crappy as the situation with Hambly had been, Clint was better off because of it. 

He owed Nat for that, Clint realized. Nat _and_ Phil. He was probably going to have to sit down and have a discussion with him once this op was over. Phil would probably want to talk about this new thing between them. 

Clint was surprisingly okay with that. He didn’t think he would mind the words, for once. He wanted to know where he stood with Phil, wanted to know what the man was looking for. Clint basically wanted to bury himself in Phil’s bed back at the Tower and never come out again. He’d have to think of some way to tell Phil that. 

He could always start there, of course. Tuck them both in bed as soon as they were home and refuse to come out again.

As soon as this op was over, Clint promised himself, smiling at the mental image. They’d sort things out.

Clint looked over the leaves of his tree branch. Woo was lead on the strike force. Clint looked back and forth between him and the rest of the agents. He kept one eye on the warehouse, scanning it for potential threats and access points. 

There were a few windows in the old structure, but most were covered, and all were dark, probably blocked by pallets or equipment. They had no idea as to the layout of the warehouse, so Clint hadn’t shot any gas or smoke arrows into the building. 

The strike team would have to go in without cover.

Clint kept to his tree and readied a few standard puncture-point arrows. The strike team, with Woo in the lead, arrived at the edge of the tree line. Jamisen, overseeing things from the surveillance van, which was practically useless with the dampening field in effect, radioed Clint.

“Any sign of activity on the depot?”

Clint had been obsessively checking for the past five minutes, but he gave the area another once-over before replying. 

“Negative. I have no movement anywhere in the area.”

“Acknowledged.” Jamisen took a breath. This was always the hardest part. “Strike team, move in.”

Clint watched as Woo and two other agents darted out of the tree line and towards the cargo doors. At the same, time three other agents made a break for the front of the warehouse. Around the back, the only place they didn’t have eyes, Clint knew six agents would be breaking from the trees to circle around the building. 

The other four agents stayed back, held in reserve until they knew the situation.

Clint kept an arrow notched as Woo threw open the cargo doors. Surprised shouts came from the warehouse, and Clint watched as the agents streamed in. Gunfire erupted, flashes of light reflecting from the cargo walls, and Clint grit his teeth. He didn’t have an angle on the inside of the structure, but that wasn’t his job. He had to trust the field agents to take control of the situation.

While Woo stormed the cargo doors, the front entrance had obviously been locked. Their orders had been to avoid outright property damage to the warehouse if possible, since they were hoping to fool Hambly when he came back with the group. Clint kept an eye on the activity in the cargo area as he watched the three agents at the front apply a thin layer of plastic explosive to the metal door.

A three second count came over the comms, and then the front doors flew open. The shouting from within the warehouse intensified, and Clint did his best to watch both entrances at once. The three agents dove inside the structure, and finally, over the comm, Woo shouted an order to Clint.

“Hawkeye! Two smoke arrows, windows one and three, then a three count and another in the cargo area. On five, four, three, two –”

Clint dropped his puncture-points and grabbed three smokeys. He had the first ready and drawn before Woo finished the count. 

He breathed in, found his target, and breathed out as the first arrow flew. He still couldn’t see beyond the window and didn’t know what structure was blocking the light from within, but he trusted Woo to know what his team needed. 

Sure enough, the arrow sailed easily through the first window, the pane of glass shattering beneath its force. The contact broke open the container on the trick arrow, and Clint knew it wouldn’t take long for the room beyond to fill with smoke. He hoped Woo and his team had been ready for the distraction. 

Clint fired the second arrow almost before the first hit. He waited the three count, then put a third through the cargo doors, trusting Woo to have gotten everyone important out of the way.

With the smoke arrows deployed, the gunshots coming from the warehouse stilled as people lost their targets. Shouts redoubled for a moment before quieting again. Woo and his agents directed movement over the comms, and Clint kept an eye on the structure, puncture-points and more smoke arrows at his fingertips, ready to be useful.

He only moved once, when a lackey made a break for the front doors. On orders from Woo, Clint put a puncture-point through his shoulder. The man screamed as he went down, clutching at the arrow shaft.

It didn’t take long after that. Woo, coughing slightly, directed clean-up. Clint waited until Jamisen gave him the go-ahead to get down. He collected his arrows and unstrung his bow, then climbed down from his oak. He gave the tree a quick pat before moving towards the warehouse. It had been a good nest.

At the warehouse, Clint could see it was going to take more than a little clean-up to get the place ready for a surprise inspection. The front doors had been blown open and smoke trailed out from the broken windows on the top floor. The cargo area had obviously been plundered, and several wooden boxes were open and overturned. 

By the time Clint arrived, S.H.I.E.L.D. personnel were already swarming the site. There were three vans pulled up to the cargo area, and agents were running back and forth with boxes full of weapons. Clint wandered over to one of the opened wooden boxes used to transport cargo. Nestled inside the straw were fourteen carefully packed assault rifles. 

They looked relatively normal at first glance, but Clint could see the soapy-shiny material that spoke of extra-terrestrial origin. He would bet good money that these things lit up like Christmas trees when they were on. They probably glowed green, too, in classic HYDRA 1950’s fashion.

“Bring back the good ol’ days?” Clint asked Jamisen, upon finding the man in the middle of the cargo area.

Jamisen kept his gaze on the agents around them, but Clint saw him smile. “You mean the 1960s cartoon? That one – what was it called? _Captain America and the_ –”

“ – _the Howling Commandos_ , yeah.” Clint grinned. “I haven’t watched it in years. Used to catch old episodes on our shitty TV on Saturday mornings.”

It was a good memory of a bad time, he and Barney crouched in their dirty kitchen. He could remember the plastic feel of the cheap linoleum, the fuzzy picture on the TV. Their dad usually drank himself into a stupor on Friday nights. As long as they didn’t make too much noise, they could watch Saturday morning cartoons for a few hours before he woke up.

“I think Coulson has the DVD collection,” Jamisen chuckled. “You should show it to Rogers, sometime.”

“I’m not sure if that would be hilarious, or if I’d get a two hour lecture on historical inaccuracies,” Clint snorted.

“If not from Steve, then from Phil,” Jamisen agreed.

There was a cough over their comm, and Clint had to grin at the reminder that Phil could hear everything they were saying. 

It took less time than Clint would have thought to clean out the weapons depot. Boxes of guns and ammunition were transferred to S.H.I.E.L.D. standard crates. 

While that was going on, other agents under Woo’s command were in charge of putting the warehouse back into a semblance of its pre-S.H.I.E.L.D.-invaded space. The windows upstairs were being repaired and several portable fans had been set up to help blow away the smoke. There wasn’t much they could do about the dozens of bullet holes in the walls, but pallets were moved to cover up the worst of the damage. Blood was moped up from the floor, but there had only been two casualties. Most of Hambly’s people had surrendered when they realized they were surrounded. 

The layout would be a little different when they finished, but Clint doubted Hambly would notice. 

Clint wandered the warehouse while that was going on. He was curious about the top floors, where Hambly had spent so much of his time.

The windows had already been replaced by the time he got up there. The top floor was little more than a single office with an open door and a catwalk around the walls of the warehouse. It looked like cardboard had been stacked in front of the windows, which explained why his arrows had gone so easily through.

Clint went to the office. S.H.I.E.L.D. had already done a sweep, but sometimes Clint found things others missed. 

At first glance, there wasn’t much there. The computer was old enough to give Tony hives, a desktop that had obviously been inspected by S.H.I.E.L.D. The desk was probably from the seventies, chipped and splattered with old paint. There was a dead fern in the corner, and a thick layer of dust on the sill. The office had one window, but it faced the back of the building where Clint hadn’t had eyes during the battle. 

This warehouse was probably a use-and-lose location; the kind of place Hambly knew he could keep for a weekend. If the feds tried to trace the location there would be no way in hell of linking it back to Hambly. 

Still there were indications that Hambly had been here. There was a pen on the table, a heavy ballpoint that looked expensive enough for Hambly to have used. Clint looked around for the papers Hambly might have been signing with it, but if there had been any he’d taken them with him.

Clint walked around the perimeter of the office. That was basically everything. That, and a rock on the windowsill.

Clint paused. Why was there a rock on the windowsill?

It looked like a fairly normal rock, about the size of Clint’s thumb. But, despite the thick layer of dust on the window, the rock itself was clean.

Clint stared at it, and realized he hadn’t heard anything over his comm since coming up the stairs. Running on a hunch, he raised his hand to his ear and tapped his comm.

“Jamisen?”

The static that crackled back made Clint flinch. He moved to thumb off his earpiece, then stopped. 

Wait. What would happen if he …?

Experimentally, Clint reached forward and tapped his finger against the rock.

The static died abruptly. Clint thumbed his comm on and off again for a second before realizing the electronic was completely dead. 

He checked his suit, but his two-way radio, kept on his belt for emergencies, was dead as well. 

Huh. Good thing he didn’t have a pacemaker. Everything electrical he had on him had died. 

Keeping one eye on the rock, Clint backed out of the office and to the edge of the stairs. The warehouse was still full of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents running around. Clint waved until he caught the eye of one of them. A minute later, Jamisen and a tech team were swarming the stairs.

They ran every kind of test they could think of on the rock before asking Clint to pick it up and bring it downstairs. 

“Why am I on fetch-and-carry duty?” Clint complained as he lifted the rock. It weighed slightly more than he would have expected for something so small. It also had a strange, soapy texture.

“Because you’ve already trashed your comm,” Jamisen explained, following Clint and the excited tech team down the stairs. “Also because Coulson is giving me an irritated sort of silence. This is your revenge-by-proxy for running around and touching unknown tech.”

“It’s not tech, it’s a _rock_ ,” Clint grumbled to cover the warm fuzzy feeling in his chest he got when he thought about Phil being worried over him.

“It’s an extra-terrestrial rock,” Phil countered five minutes later, after Clint had placed the rock in the secure S.H.I.E.L.D. transport box and gotten a new ear comm from Jamisen.

“Well, it looked like a very terrestrial rock when I touched it,” Clint argued, fighting and failing to keep the smile from his face at the sound of Phil’s voice in his ear. 

“Where are you?” Clint asked. “Are you close?”

“Leaving the hotel in five,” Phil confirmed. “Is the warehouse ready?”

Clint looked around. He caught Woo’s eye, and the agent spoke in his comm.

“It will be by the time you get here,” Woo said.

Phil made an agreeable sort of noise. In the background, Clint could hear a flushing sound. 

“Did you duck into the bathroom to yell at me for touching space rocks?” He grinned.

Clint could almost see Phil rolling his eyes. “No, I ducked into the bathroom to yell at Jamisen for letting you touch space rocks. It’s much easier to reprimand you by proxy. Less back-talk that way.”

Clint narrowed his eyes. “You’re waiting until you see me to smack me on the back of the head, aren’t you?”

“I could plead the fifth,” Phil countered calmly, “but I don’t think that applies in this case.”

Clint laughed. “Where’s Nat?”

“Outside. She’ll ride with Father Roni. I’m in the middle car with Naruko and the rest.”

Clint nodded to himself and looked around. The warehouse was almost ready. “Okay, I’m getting into position. See you through my rifle scope in fifteen, sir. Break a leg.”

Phil made an amused sound over the comm, something between a snort and a hum, and went back to radio silence.

Clint waved to Woo as he left the building and circled around the back. He observed the clean-up crew as he went. 

They certainly were thorough. By the time the warehouse was smoke-free, the S.H.I.E.L.D. team had finished rearranging the layout to hide the worst of the bullet holes and had swept the floor of shells. The last agent out the door even shook dust from a sack back onto the floor, disguising the footprints and scuffs they’d made during their entry. The agents left inside had dropped their S.H.I.E.L.D. gear and put on Hambly’s grunts’ outfits instead. They hoisted confiscated weapons and went to stand around their various pallets to wait.

They wouldn’t fool Hambly for long, but Jamisen was hoping they wouldn’t have to. The point of this charade was to make Hambly look stupid and untrustworthy in the eyes of the Big Three, after all. They just had to distract him with the scene until Phil and Natasha could wind everyone into a riot.

For this op, Clint wasn’t back in his tree. Watson had raced from the hotel to the clearing to beat Hambly and the Big Three to the warehouse. She would be up in her own nest now, scanning the area from up high.

With so many of their operatives on the ground under cover, and no telling which way people would run if the shooting started, Jamisen wanted Clint mobile. Clint found a rickety staircase around the back of the building and hoisted himself onto it, climbing up onto the roof of the warehouse.

It was old and slightly falling apart, but the roof would definitely hold for the hour the operation would take. It was clear of debris, which would make running to the other side of the building easier. Clint felt better having access to all sides of the building. 

There was even a roof access to the cargo area. It didn’t connect to much inside the building, and the staircase must have been removed years earlier, but there was a ledge just inside the roof he could perch on. That would give him good sight-lines into the cargo area for when people moved around inside. 

Clint finished surveying his position and got himself down on his belly above the front entrance. He set up his sniper rifle and waited. 

It didn’t take long. 

Clint spoke softly into his comm when he spotted the first sign of vehicles approaching. He watched Hambly drive up in his white limo. The car coasted to a stop and Hambly got out. Clint watched him carefully. He saw the way Hambly glanced over the building before turning back towards the road. 

He wondered if Hambly had noticed the differences. There were a few scorch marks on the outside of the front doors from the plastic explosive, and there were a few boot prints in the mud they hadn’t quite been able to flatten. But the man wasn’t turning to run, and he wasn’t reaching for his cell phone. He probably hadn’t noticed, then.

The comms were silent as everyone watched Hambly stroll around his car. He turned towards the warehouse, and Clint held his breath. This was the question – would he walk into the warehouse and notice their agents were not the operatives he had placed in charge? 

But no – Hambly completed his circuit around the car and turned back again. He paced back and forth a few steps. Clint let out his breath and refocused his attention. They were good for now.

A minute later three dark SUVs drove up. Clint watched as Naruko, Father Roni, and Michelmas all stepped out into the sun. Roni turned and offered a hand to someone inside his vehicle, and Clint watched as Nat stepped out. He refocused on Naruko, and sure enough, there was Phil. 

Clint breathed steadily. For a moment, it seemed his hands were going to shake, but then they steadied. 

He was okay. He could do this.

Clint watched as Hambly stepped forward towards the group. He spread his arms and welcomed everyone expansively. The rest of the group nodded, eyes serious. Nat stood with Roni, and Phil kept towards the back. Hambly turned and gestured everyone inside. Clint twisted and crawled over to the roof access. He ducked in through the open ceiling and watched as Hambly opened the cargo access doors. Clint kept his line on Hambly, watching for the slightest indication that their ruse had failed. But Hambly’s steps never hesitated. He didn’t seem to notice anything different inside the warehouse.

He had a good line of sight from the roof access, but the acoustics were a little skewed. Hambly wasn’t speaking loudly, so Clint only caught every second word. But he seemed to be welcoming everyone to “the next phase of weapons engineering” or something. 

Clint snorted. He doubted Stark would be impressed.

Naruko said something Clint couldn’t catch. Hambly smirked and walked towards the nearest crate. Clint watched as Hambly lifted off the lid and cleared away the hay inside.

Hambly paused. Naruko said something behind him, but Hambly didn’t turn. He seemed transfixed by the empty crate. Clint smirked and watched as Hambly ignored Naruko and the others and ran towards a second crate.

He lifted the lid and found it empty, too. Behind him, the rest of the group walked towards the first empty crate. Naruko and Roni stared, while Michelmas started rummaging through the hay. There was another moment of shocked silence, and then, even from his height, Clint could hear the babble of confused and angry voices.

Everyone started moving, then. Clint kept his line on Hambly as best he could. Shouts of “cheated us!” and “I want my merchandise!” echoed up from the floor. Clint could hear Phil clearly through the comm.

“Gentleman, please. I’m sure Mr. Hambly has a perfectly good reason why his weapons are missing, especially since we’ve each paid twenty percent up-front for the right to distribute said weapons.”

Clint watched with a grin as Hambly glared at Phil. Then he turned, staring at the warehouse, and Clint saw the moment when he began to notice the half-covered, bullet hole infested walls.

Nat stepped up to distract the group from Hambly’s dawning realization. “Perhaps, this one?” she said, stepping another crate and trying to lift the cover. Roni swore and moved to help her, but that one was obviously empty as well.

When Roni turned back to Hambly, he had his gun out and pointed at the weapons dealer.

Everyone quieted, and Clint heard Roni clearly. “Where are my guns, Hambly? I paid my twenty percent. I am prepared to pay a lot more, but I want my weapons.”

Hambly slowly lifted his empty hands in front of him. “I haven’t cheated you,” he said, his voice trying for even. “I’ve been robbed! Look.” He gestured at the walls. “Look at the bullet holes. Those were not here this afternoon. Look at this. I’ve been robbed, someone has been here. They took the guns, they –”

“Who, then?” Phil asked him. His voice was soft but deadly, and with an edge of scorn. “Your men are here, the crates are here, and yet the weapons are not. So who took them from you, Hambly? The Easter Bunny?”

Michelmas laughed. “The Tooth Fairy, perhaps,” he said, grinning. “Or Santa Claus, maybe. Who took your precious weapons from you, Hambly?”

“I don’t know!” Hambly shouted. He breathed deeply, obviously trying to gather his control. When he spoke again, it was with only an edge of frustration in his voice. “I don’t know, but I will find out and – “

“And what?” Naruko said. He was not laughing. His voice was serious. “You have demonstrated that you cannot be trusted. I do not want your weapons any more, Hambly. What I want is my money.”

Clint watched. A vein on Hambly’s forehead started to throb. “I will provide you with a complete refund, of course,” he said, obviously trying for patience. 

“And how long will _that_ take?” Natasha cut in, impatiently. She tugged on Father Roni’s arm. “I _told_ you, you should have let me keep the money. It’s _wasted_ on a man like him.”

Roni hushed her, but the others turned looks of scorn towards Hambly.

“He’s probably spent it all,” Phil said, his voice cutting. “Hookers and drugs, probably.”

Michelmas snorted. “That pretty bartender from the hotel. Fuck, Hambly. Couldn’t keep it in your pants, could you?”

Hambly’s hands clenched into fists. He was shaking. “Let’s keep it civil here, gentlemen. Or – “

“Or what?” Michelmas interrupted. He pulled his own gun from his holster, a high-powered magnum Clint knew could blow away Hambly and any three people standing behind him. “Or what, scum?”

Hambly had both hands in the air, but Naruko pulled his weapon, too. Instead of aiming at Hambly, though, he turned and pointed it at Michelmas. 

“You will not shoot him until I get my money.”

Michelmas shifted his attention to Naruko. Phil put his hands up and stepped between them. “Now, gentlemen, we can discuss this calmly.”

Clint shifted his attention from Hambly to Phil. He held his breath, fingers tightening on the trigger. He waited for Jamisen to give the kill order, but instead Naruko and Michelmas lowered their weapons.

“Fine,” Naruko said. “We will have a civilized conversation about this.” He turned back to Hambly the instant Clint did. 

But Hambly was gone.

Clint stared at the empty space where Hambly had been. Naruko swore. Roni threw Nat off his arm and ran forward, gun first, scanning the area. 

In his ear, Clint’s comm burst into noise. The agents on the ground disguised as Hambly’s men all started looking around, a few following Roni’s forward dash.

From his perch, Clint scanned the whole warehouse. Nothing. Not a whisper of movement anywhere. 

Fuck, they had lost him. He scanned the warehouse again, thinking furiously. The cloaking device. S.H.I.E.L.D. figured the cloak had been in the car, built in maybe, but Hambly must have had it on him the whole time. 

Jamisen crackled in his ear. “The tracker is still showing in the warehouse. All agents be alert. Hambly is still in there, somewhere.”

Below him, the group was breaking into shouts again. Clint kept one eye on Phil and Nat and the other on the warehouse. Jamisen said Hambly was here, so there had to be something he could track. A patch of dust that moved, a set of footprints, a –

He paused. There. By one of the pallets. A piece of straw lifted off from a crate and settled on the floor. Clint’s gaze snapped to it. He watched it fall, then cased the area.

There! A footprint without a foot. 

Clint was up and off his ledge, away from the cargo area and back onto the roof even as he spoke into his comm 

“Jamisen, I have him. Hambly, under some kind of cloaking field. Heading towards the west side window.”

Clint didn’t wait for Jamisen to reply, just ran towards the west side of the building and leapt off the roof. He was too high up to just jump to the ground, so he twisted in mid-air to find the ledge of the window long enough to slow his speed. Working with his momentum, Clint adjusted his grip on the ledge and back-flipped, vaulting off the ledge and landing on the ground a story below.

Clint stuck the landing, but slipped a little on the wet grass. He caught himself quickly, and straightened as he heard a scrapping sound to his left. Clint looked but for the life of him couldn’t see anything, not even a vague distortion of light.

Clint stood beside the outside wall of the building, completely without cover. If Hambly were cloaked beside him, Clint would have no way to know. Hoping he’d get lucky, Clint dove forward towards the direction of the scrapping sound. But he must have been wrong, or maybe Hambly hadn’t been there at all, because Clint flew forward through empty air and landed on the grass. 

As soon as he hit, Clint twisted. He kept his head up and watched the grass, looking for any sign of movement or broken stems. 

From inside the building he could hear shouting. The comm in his ear buzzed slightly, and Clint winced. 

Hambly. He must have one of those stones on him. He was near, then. But earlier Hambly had been standing next to Phil and there hadn’t been any comm interference. Which meant that Hambly had to be – 

_Fuck_. He had to be right on top of him.

Clint turned, but it was too late. The side of a boot caught him full in the face.

Everything went dark.

 

~ ~ ~ 

 

Clint woke up an indeterminate amount of time later. Awareness returned sullenly, like it didn’t really feel consciousness was a good idea at the moment. Clint swallowed and tried not to moan out loud.

His head really fucking hurt. 

Clint swallowed dryly and concentrated on lying still. He kept his eyes closed and paid close attention to the world around him. 

He was … moving. Clint lay where he woke and felt the bump and vibrations of the road. He was definitely in a vehicle of some sort. He inhaled carefully and coughed, a mix of dust and rubber assaulting his noise.

It was a scent Clint was quite familiar with. He was in a trunk.

Clint opened his eyes and tried to look around. There wasn’t much light, but he could make out the dim dimensions of the car. He wasn’t in a limo, that was for sure. 

He tried to move, wondering if he could get to the knife in his boot, but his arms were twisted tight behind him. Clint pulled at his arms and his shoulders ached. He tested his wrists as much as he could manage. Not rope. Zip ties, it felt like. His arms were tied together behind his back, stacked like he was grasping his elbows. He had no leverage from his position to squirm out of the ties. 

He tried his legs, then, and found his ankles tied, too. There was another line around his thighs, pressing his knees together. 

Clint felt like a trussed turkey. His only saving grace was that he didn’t appear to be gagged. His moved his jaw and felt the comm shift in his ear. Good, then. S.H.I.E.L.D. could – 

Clint paused. There was nothing coming from his comm. It was absolutely silent. Even if everyone had been quiet, Clint should still be able to hear breathing, or the occasional cough. 

Fuck. His comm was dead. 

Hambly had probably touched him with one of those space rocks. He probably kept an extra in this getaway car. Which meant Clint’s radio, already replaced once that afternoon, was dead too. If it was even still on his hip, that was. 

And if Hambly had touched him with one of those rocks, it meant he had probably touched it himself, too. If the rocks really did kill everything electronic, then the tracker Clint had so carefully placed last night was probably dead. 

Shit. He was alone. Tied up and getting stiff, and without backup already on the way. 

Great.

Clint concentrated on keeping his breathing slow and steady. He had to pretend to be asleep. And then whenever they got to where Hambly was taking him, he had to struggle. He had to make it look good, like he didn’t think anyone would be coming for him.

Because they would be coming for him. It might take them a little longer without the tracker, but they would find him. Nat and Phil, they would find him. 

They would.

And it was okay. Clint had been in this kind of situation before. He had been kidnapped and trussed like a Thanksgiving Day special. He had been tortured by professionals. 

Admittedly, none of those professionals had sucked him off, before. None of them had a good and solid reason to suspect Clint had been playing them, had ruined their only chance of an important weapons drop that could have made them millionaires twice over.

Hambly had a lot of reasons to be pretty pissed at Clint, right now. It meant he wasn’t likely to go easy on him.

Clint closed his eyes and tried to breathe deeply, tried to keep his heart rate from jumping past “reasonable” and into “frantic”. He had to assess the situation. What did Hambly know? What could Clint waste time telling him?

Clint frowned and thought back to the op. Hambly probably didn’t know who he was. That is, he would suspect Clint was some kind of double agent. But he wouldn’t know from who. Phil and Jamisen had been playing Naruko and Hambly off each other, and Clint had first met Hambly when they had fingered Woo for one of Naruko’s men. So Clint could pretend to be one of Naruko’s double agents. 

He wasn’t sure if that would make Hambly more or less eager to kill him.

Clint counted his heartbeats to gauge the time. It was roughly thirty minutes later when they pulled off whatever road they were on. The car was definitely slowing down now. Clint listened to the bumps and tried to evaluate the dim changing light. It was darker, suddenly, and the sound of the road under the tires changed. 

The car pulled to a stop, and Clint tensed as the front door opened. If the trunk had been a little taller, he could have gotten his knees underneath him and made a leap for it when the trunk opened. As it was, he couldn’t do more than squint when the trunk popped and the light level changed.

Clint rolled onto his back and squinted at the figure standing above him in the dim light. It was definitely Hambly, his pristine white suit now dirty with grass stains and marred by wrinkles. He had a glock in his right hand pointed at Clint’s face. 

Clint blinked a few times more than absolutely necessary and looked from Hambly to the rest of the room. They were in some kind of large dark building, another warehouse perhaps. Clint inhaled and identified the smell of rot and decay. 

Whatever this place was, it wasn’t in current use. 

Clint looked up at Hambly. The weapons runner was nearly shaking in anger, his lips pressed into a thin white line, his eyes hard and narrowed.

Clint decided to play it belligerent. 

“What the _fuck_ , man?”

Hambly hit him with the gun. It was a quick, almost glancing blow off Clint’s temple, but it hurt. The force of it drove Clint onto his side in the small trunk, his tied hands and feet unable to brace for the blow.

“And that’s just for starters,” Hambly said, his voice thick. As Clint blinked the stars from his eyes, Hambly leaned forward and grabbed him by the shoulder, dragging him up and out of the trunk. He let go when Clint was halfway out and surrendered him to gravity. Clint fell the rest of the distance to the dirty concrete floor, landing on his back with a curse. 

Hambly kicked him hard in the ribs, then grabbed him again and dragged him forward into the warehouse. Clint didn’t bother trying to resist. Instead he tipped his head back and played dead weight, trying to analyze his surroundings.

He didn’t know how long he’d been unconscious before he woke up, but he had spent time memorizing the maps of the area. There were three more-or-less abandoned sections of the city they could be in. He was sure Phil was checking every one.

They would come for him soon. He just needed to hold it together and get as much information as he could while he waited.

Hambly let him go in the middle of the warehouse. Clint tried to brace himself, but his head still pinged off the concrete floor. He lay on his back for a second and groaned, distracting Hambly from the way his eyes were darting around, still taking in his surroundings.

There were two old, rusted cars by the back wall and three shelves of tools to his right. Clint could see three possibilities for cutting his ties, but nothing within hopping distance. He would have to get rid of Hambly’s gun before he went for anything, or Hambly would just shoot him in the back when he tried.

“So, I’m only going to bother asking a handful of times,” Hambly said, stepping forward to loom over Clint. “And then I’m going to start getting nasty.” He kicked Clint hard again, in the same side as before. “Who are you working for?”

Clint braced for the kick, but it still hurt. He huffed out a breath and wondered how much backtalk he could give before Hambly got annoyed and shot him. “Someone who doesn’t appreciate your negotiating style.”

Hambly snorted. “That means either Roni or Naruko. You’ll never convince me that fool Michelmas knows the first thing about negotiation.”

Clint shrugged, though it hurt his ribs. “Okay, I won’t try to convince you.”

Hambly swore and kicked him again. Clint managed to turn so it caught his shoulder more than his side. 

“You little fuck,” Hambly growled. He kicked him. It must have felt good, because he did it another three times. Clint twisted as much as he could, but each kick felt like a hammer to his ribs.

Finally, Hambly stopped. Breathing hard, he crouched next to Clint’s head. Through the waves of pain, Clint could see his hand on his gun was steady. “You,” Hambly panted, “are going to tell me everything you know. You are going to tell me who you are working for, and how much _they_ know. And, most importantly, you are going to tell me where my guns are. Because if you don’t,” Hambly leaned close, “I am going to hurt you. I am going to hurt you for a long time, and I am going to _enjoy_ hurting you.”

Clint didn’t doubt him. He also didn’t want to stay and find out what that would be like if he had half a chance of getting out of there. So while Hambly thought him incapacitated by the pain, Clint gathered his legs underneath his belly. 

In one smooth motion, Clint flipped from his side onto his back, snapping his head back and into Hambly’s face. The top of his head connected with Hambly’s chin, and Hambly went flying backwards out of his crouch. His head made a very satisfying _thunk_ as it hit the floor.

Clint groaned and flipped back onto his side. Okay, that had hurt. But he had to move. Hambly, if he was unconscious, wouldn’t be out for long. Clint had to get his hands and legs free before the gun-runner woke up. 

He’d been threatened before. Clint almost considered himself a connoisseur of threatening. And he knew from a dozen subtle cues that Hambly was completely serious. If Clint didn’t get out of here, Hambly was going to fuck him up, and fuck him up good. 

Turning, Clint tried to push himself on his knees, an almost impossible task with his body tied the way it was. His head hurt and his side ached, but Clint moved despite the pain. 

He managed to get himself onto his knees and sat up to look around. He had to get to the gun, he had to –

The blow caught him unawares. He didn’t have time to see who or what hit him, just felt the stinging force of it whip him around and back down to the hard floor. Clint felt his skull bounce once off the concrete, and then blackness claimed him.

 

~ ~ ~ 

 

When he woke again, Clint was tied to a chair. The ties around his thighs were gone, but his ankles were still securely trussed. Not only were they tied together, but they had been bound to the chair legs as well. He pulled at his arms and found they were still tied in the same position, hand-to-elbow. His hands were almost completely numb, which meant he had been unconscious long enough to move past the pins-and-needles sensation.

Not good.

Clint tried to keep relaxed and play it unconscious, but a stinging slap across his cheeks made him flinch. A deep voice in front of him boomed, “Hey boss, he’s awake.”

Clint blinked his gritty eyes and lifted his head to look around. He was in the same warehouse as before, but now in front of him stood a large man Clint blearily recognized as Hambly’s driver from the hotel. 

Fuck. So Hambly’d had back up the entire time. Probably not the smartest escape attempt, then.

“You,” Clint said to the driver, his tongue thick and dry in his mouth, “have a mean left hook, my friend.”

The driver, who was probably more of a goon, clenched his hands into fists at his side. “I am not your friend,” he grated.

Clint gave him a cheery smile. It hurt. “What? You mean my sunny personality hasn’t won you over?” 

The goon punched him again, this time in the face. Clint’s head snapped backward, and okay, he was going to have a shiner in the morning. If he made it to the morning. 

Clint turned his head and spat on the concrete floor. It was more blood than spit. “Okay,” he coughed, “guess it hasn’t then. Going to have to work on that.”

Hambly stepped forward. “Now,” he said, voice striving for pleasant and missing by about a mile, “who are you working for?”

Clint squinted at him. “Well,” he said, drawing the word out, “he never told me his name, but he had big ears and a fuzzy tail, and I think he was the Easter Bunny.”

The goon hit him again, in the stomach this time. Clint cough and choked, vomit rising in his throat.

Hambly grinned and stepped closer. “Who,” he asked again, voice much smoother now, “are you working for?”

Clint coughed a few more times. “Okay,” he wheezed. “I lied about the tail.” He choked down the vomit in his throat. “But he did have a big red suit and a list he was checking twice. I’m pretty sure I saw your name on the naughty side, Hambly. You’ve been a bad boy.”

This time, Clint ducked his shoulder into the blow. The goon shoved him back and hit him again, on the other side of his face. 

_Nice,_ Clint thought, gagging through the pain, _Matching shiners._

The goon flexed his knuckles menacingly. Hambly chuckled as Clint continued to retch. He stepped even closer. Clint looked up and tried to calculate the distance it would take to head-butt Hambly in the face again. 

He couldn’t do it without overbalancing and falling on his face. Still, from this angle, he could see the bruise blossoming on Hambly’s chin. He hadn’t left the other man completely unmarked.

“Such resistance to pain,” Hambly smiled at him. “I can see you’ve been trained for this. I doubt Roni has the patience to put so much effort into his infiltrators. Naruko, perhaps? Or are you going to try and convince me it is Michelmas again?”

Clint swallowed past the vomit. “I thought I told you I wasn’t much for convincing,” he said.

“That’s true,” Hambly agreed. He lifted his gun from where it was resting against his right hip, and trailed the barrel of it down the side of Clint’s face. Clint tried to suppress his shudder, but Hambly noticed anyway and laughed.

“Perhaps you are working for my supplier, instead,” the gun-runner said, still smiling. “Is that it? Do you work for HYDRA?”

Clint turned his head away from the gun to spit again on the concrete floor. “Who the fuck is HYDRA?” he asked.

Hambly smiled tightly. “My suppliers. They are very bad people, but they pay well. Is that who hired you?”

Clint glared at him. “I don’t do gang work.”

Hambly leaned close. The gun barrel trailed along Clint’s temple. “HYDRA isn’t a gang, per se. More like a terrorist organization.” He shrugged, “Like I said, they pay well.”

Clint met Hambly’s eyes. He was going to have to play this right. When Clint smiled, it was with the tight edge of someone reaching his limits.

Clint knew that smile; he’d seen it in the mirror often enough. Now was the time to bring it out in public. 

“I’m not telling you anything.”

“But you already have,” Hambly smiled. He stepped forward, his shins brushing against the front of Clint’s knees. The barrel of the gun bit into Clint’s temple as Hambly pressed it more firmly into place. He raised his left hand and trailed it up and down Clint’s cheek.

Clint tried to jerk away, but Hambly only pushed the gun further into his head. Clint felt the edges of it dig into his temple. Hambly’s hand brushed along the side of his face, his thumb skimming the bruised skin of his right cheek. Clint kept his lips clamped shut and breathed through his nose. 

Hambly chuckled and continued running his fingers down Clint’s face. He trailed his hand over Clint’s neck and down his chest. It was a fake, threatening intimacy, and Clint hated it.

He tried to move, but Hambly held him still with the press of the gun. Clint could hear his own breathing echoing harshly in his ear, but there was nothing he could do. He was literally tied hand and foot and this - _this_ \- was why he loved and hated bondage. This kind of surrender could be good, could be _so good_ if it had been anyone other than Hambly running his hands over Clint’s body.

If it had been Phil.

Clint locked his jaw and forced himself not to make a sound as Hambly trailed his hand across Clint’s chest and down to his belly. The gun-runner paused, noting the obvious discomfort on Clint’s face, and he grinned. Then he ghosted his hand over the front of Clint’s jeans. 

Clint ground his teeth together. He had known this was coming, he told himself. He knew Hambly would use their false intimacy to get inside his head.

But just because he had been bracing for it didn’t help when Hambly pressed the heel of his palm onto Clint’s crotch.

Hambly smiled at Clint’s tight expression and pressed his hand down harder, grinding into him. The gun-runner leaned forward and spoke into Clint’s ear. “Tell me what I want to know, or I am going to pull you out of this chair and rape you within an inch of your life.” His voice was calm and steady, but there was a thread of excitement underneath it.

“I’ll enjoy it too,” Hambly continued. Clint’s skin prickled at the hot stink of his breath. “I’ve done it before. You’d be surprised how men who are conditioned to pain break down at the press of a cock in their ass.”

Hambly grinned at him, dark and dirty. “Though in light of our activities last night, I gather you wouldn’t be so adverse to it, would you?”

Clint felt his breathing hitch, but he forced himself to swallow the words that wanted to bubble up. _No_ , he told himself, _that would be the easy way out_. He didn’t want that. Not with Hambly, not ever again. Phil told him he didn’t have to. 

Hambly must have felt how tense he was. He smiled and leaned back. “Now,” the gun-runner said, “who do you work for?”

Clint ground his teeth. He could do this, he told himself. He could play this angle. Phil would come for him soon. He wouldn’t have to do more than this.

Clint forced the name out through gritted teeth, as if it were physically painful to say. “Naruko.”

Hambly smiled. “And what is he paying you?”

“Five percent,” Clint ground out. “On a job worth millions.”

“Ahh,” Hambly said, leaning away again. The gun came up and trailed along Clint’s other cheek. It burned where the goon had punched him. “And where are my weapons?”

Clint gritted his teeth. “I don’t know.”

“Really?” Hambly didn’t sound amused anymore. He pressed the gun against Clint’s temple, and reached his other hand around Clint’s throat. His nails dug in, gripping the flesh beneath Clint’s ears. “I think you do.”

Clint wanted to laugh, but he couldn’t get the blast of air necessary past the grip Hambly had on his throat. “I really don’t,” he grated instead.

“Hmmm,” Hambly waited for a moment, then let go and leaned back. Clint coughed. “Either you know, or I’m going to have a very fun time proving that you don’t.”

Hambly’s hand went to his belt, and Clint sucked in a hiss of air. He clenched and unclenched his hands as well as he was able around the ties. 

“Please,” he said, his voice desperate, only partly acting now. “Please, don’t.”

Hambly just laughed, and started taking off his belt. Clint looked away and ground his teeth together. 

Fuck, not again. This was always the way it had happened before. This was always where Clint got scared, where he started to reason it would be so _easy_ to give in and make it simpler on himself. 

But this wasn’t Vienna, or Argentina. This wasn’t any of the half dozen places Clint had been lost and in a corner, with no way out that he didn’t make for himself. 

Because if men were easy to break with sex, as Hambly claimed, Clint knew they were also easy to distract with it.

It would work here, too, Clint knew. He could distract Hambly. He could beg a little, make it sound good. He could offer to suck Hambly off, to repay the favour from last night.

Hambly might even go for it. Clint could play the whole scenario out: he’d give Hambly a blow job while the goon watched, and then maybe he’d suck the goon off, too. Then Hambly would untie him and fuck him once or twice on the floor. He’d have to untie Clint’s legs to do it, and while Hambly was distracted by his cock in Clint’s ass, Clint would turn the tables on him. 

He could probably break Hambly’s neck with his legs. The goon would be more difficult, because they wouldn’t untie his arms. But Clint figured he could handle it. 

He had handled it before. Argentina had been bad. There had been three of them, in that room, and Clint had been the only one to walk away. 

But then – what? Limp back to headquarters? Leave the warehouse and find a phone and spend the next three months in the shower, burning his towels and pretending everything was fine?

Clint shook his head. No. Not again. He wasn’t going to do that to himself again. There was another way. 

Clint took a deep breath. He had to trust that Phil was coming for him. He had to trust that, this time, he had back-up. Phil and Nat. They wouldn’t want him to do anything. They would remind him that he wasn’t out here by himself.

He wasn’t alone.

So Clint resolutely kept his mouth shut while Hambly grinned and shook out his belt. He clamped his lips down on all the words that would make this easier, that would lure Hambly into a false sense of security. He locked his eyes on a patch of oil on the floor and clenched his jaw as Hambly walked towards him, his pants hanging open, his cock easily visible through the thin fabric of his boxers.

He was so intent in his determination not to look that it took a shocked second for the quiet _pop_ and the pause in Hambly’s footsteps to register. When Clint did look up, it was to see the surprised expression of disbelief on Hambly’s face.

Clint blinked and looked down at the spreading red on Hambly’s chest. 

There was another soft _pop_ sound, and a second bloom of blood appeared on Hambly’s chest. Two more _pop pop_ ‘s rang out, and Hambly staggered backward. His face contorted in pain. He stumbled and Clint watched as his knees collapsed. Hambly hit the concrete floor with a wet flop.

Three more silenced bullets whizzed by, and the goon that had been just starting forward went down with two in the chest and one right between the eyes. Clint stared at them in shock.

From behind him came the rushing sound of feet, and Clint craned his head over his shoulder. Phil was running up towards him, coming in from the darkened entrance of the warehouse door, with murder on his face.

Clint stared at him. Phil looked good, sneaky and competent and hot as all hell in a dark buttoned suit with a twenty-two in one steady hand. Clint drank in the sight of him. 

Phil slid to a stop beside Clint’s chair, his icy grey eyes meeting Clint’s shocked blue ones for a moment before striding towards the downed bodies of Hambly and his goon. That second of hesitation told Clint how badly shaken by this Phil was. He wanted Phil to come back and untie him, but he knew as well as Phil did that downed hostiles couldn’t be trusted. He watched as Phil knelt beside Hambly and checked his pulse. 

“I hope he’s still alive,” Natasha said from beside him.

Clint decided he would blame how badly he jumped on the distracting way Phil filled out a suit. He turned to look at Natasha, her beautiful face set in hard, angry lines, and shook his head.

“I hope he’s dead,” he said, and he meant it. “I want this whole fucking op to be over.”

Nat turned and met his eyes. Clint wasn’t sure what she saw there, but after a moment she smiled. She leaned forward and caught his face in her hands, then pressed her lips to his forehead. “I’m glad you’re okay.”

Clint closed his eyes and breathed in the scent of her, spice and gunpowder and the faint sizzle of electricity. Natasha. 

“Me, too.” He said. Then he smiled and looked up, and turned around to watch Phil. He was just coming up from a crouch beside the second body. “And I am. Thanks to you guys.”

Phil shook his head as he walked back towards them, his lips tight. “We should have been here sooner. We lost him immediately, and it was only Tasha’s through review of Hambly’s adjacent properties that saved us. As it was we hit three other warehouses before finding this one.”

Clint shook his head at Phil’s grim expression. “No, I mean, I knew you guys were coming. I knew you would both be here, eventually. That’s what helped me hang on.”

The confession brought Phil up short. He stood and stared at Clint for a moment, and then it was Phil’s turn to lean forward and grip him by the face. But Phil didn’t kiss him on the forehead. 

Clint drew in a sudden, shocked breath as Phil tilted his head down and kissed him on the mouth. It was only a press of lips, hard and too short, but it made every part of him tingle from head to toe. 

Phil let go and leaned back. Clint could see the faint flush in his cheeks as he leaned over to cut the ties on Clint’s hands.

Clint looked over at Natasha to find her smirking at him. There was understanding and poker nights and so much blackmail in her smile, but it was warm. Clint ducked his head and fought his own answering blush. 

Then Phil cut the ties on his hands, and Clint sucked in a cry. “ _Fuck_ ,” he said, with feeling, as his arms, deadened by lack of circulation, dropped towards the floor.

Phil caught him and quick brought his hands back in an approximation of their former position. Clint hissed. He could hardly feel Phil’s hand on his arm, he was that numb.

“It’s okay,” Phil said, passing his knife to Natasha. She leaned over and cut the ties around his ankles as Phil kept a grip on his arms. “I’ll use my tie to hold them in place until the circulation comes back. Tell me when you get to the pins and needles stage, okay?”

Clint clenched his teeth and nodded. He rolled his ankles a little – his feet weren’t nearly as bad as his arms, twisted around behind him as they had been. He was able to stand with help from Natasha and Phil. Phil, as promised, kept a grip on his arms as they manoeuvred Clint out of the chair.

Phil kept one hand on Clint and the other went to his tie. Clint couldn’t help but stare as Phil undid his tie one-handed. He could count the number of times he had seen Phil without a tie on one hand, and he was no longer ashamed to admit the scant memories had fuelled the majority of his jerk-off sessions. 

The fact that Phil was usually without a tie because he was using it to tourniquet Clint’s bleeding arm, or leg, or some other vital piece of himself, had never seemed to detract from the image. 

This time, Phil looped his tie around the still-numb skin of Clint’s wrists. He did something complicated behind him with a few knots Clint couldn’t see, then stepped back. Phil readied Clint with a tap on his shoulder and then experimentally let go of his arms. They both breathed a small sigh of relief as the tie kept Clint’s arms in a looser approximation of their former position. He had less drag on his shoulders with Phil’s tie than he had previously, and he could feel the blood slowly seeping back into his arms.

Now this was the kind of bondage he was interested in, being restrained by one of Phil’s ties. Definitely more jerk-off session material.

Clint looked up, ready to say something joking to that effect, and met Phil’s eyes. He stopped, shocked, at the depth of _want_ he saw reflected there. Clint licked his lips, and Phil’s gaze darted immediately to his mouth.

Okay. So maybe there would be fewer solitary jerk-off sessions in his future.

Natasha cleared her throat, interrupting the moment, and Clint shot her a split-second glare before the warehouse doors opened and what seemed to be half of S.H.I.E.L.D. rushed in. 

Nat smirked while Phil helped him turn to meet the incoming agents. Clint saw Jamisen and Kumar, with Watson standing behind them, watching anxiously as he hobbled towards the double doors. Everyone looked relieved to see him in one piece, and Clint surprised himself by feeling a rush of affection for these people. It seemed that despite his best efforts, including but not limited to his recent mind-controlled attack on the helicarrier, he still had some friends within S.H.I.E.L.D. 

He wasn’t counting Natasha or Phil in that group. Natasha and Phil were family.

They got Clint back to the surveillance van and about three dozen medics attacked him at once. Nat left him to his fate but Phil stuck with him, sitting beside him in the van and tapping at his phone while Clint got two different injections, a portable x-ray of his ankle, and another one of each shoulder. When they went to go for his arms, though, Clint shifted back. Phil looked up from his phone to issue a mild yet quelling glare at the medic who was going for his tie.

“That’s fine for now; he needs to get the circulation back first. We can take it off at headquarters.”

The medic hesitated, but consoled herself with a little poking and prodding and left the tie in place. Clint didn’t bother trying to hide how relieved he felt. His fingers were just starting to tingle, and if he really concentrated his could flex his elbows a little. Phil’s makeshift restraint seemed to be working, and he didn’t want to mess with anything that might impair his aim.

He also really, _really_ liked the idea of Phil’s tie around his arms. Possibly that was something they would have to have a discussion about, some day.

Clint was vaguely surprised when the van turned past the interstate and headed in the direction of their hotel. The op was definitely over, the guns had been secured and Hambly was dead. Evac had obviously arrived. But Phil met his questioning glance with a slow blink that said _trust me_ in a language Clint had been learning for years. So he shut up and leaned back on his seat in the van, closing his eyes.

At the hotel, Phil helped him out of the van and Clint had to blink a few times to put the world back in focus. His adrenalin was finally crashing, and though Clint had spent more than a few of the past several hours unconscious, it apparently hadn’t been a restful sleep. He felt exhausted and gummy. Only Phil’s hand on his elbow kept him upright, and Clint staggered after him into the hotel.

Jamisen and Kumar followed them, and Nat ducked in just as elevator doors started to close. Clint leaned against Phil as they rode up in silence, and let Jamisen and Kumar file into the suite first when they arrived. Nat gave them a small, satisfied smile and ducked around a corner, presumably to guard their back. Phil gently guided him inside the hotel and led him to the bedroom, and Clint let himself be tugged towards the bed.

Despite his exhaustion, Clint managed to summon a flirty smile. “Eager to have your wicked way with me, sir?”

Phil reached a hand up to cradle his face. Clint closed his eyes and leaned into the touch. “You have no idea,” Phil murmured, softly, and let go. Clint blinked his way awake again. “But for now my desire to strip you out of these clothes is less nefarious and more geared towards your health and sanity, Barton. Also, you kind of stink.”

Clint huffed a laugh and rolled his shoulders, which were mostly awake now and only the slightest bit tingly. “The romance is dead.”

Phil grabbed him by the chin and gave him another dazzling kiss, hard and fast and with just a little tongue.

“Hardly,” Phil countered, breathing hard when he pulled away.

Clint blinked at him. “I’m going to have a really good come back for that, sir, when the blood rushes back to my brain, and I’ve slept for about a year.”

Phil chuckled, and reached behind Clint to carefully start removing his tie. Together they worked Clint’s arms back around to the front of his chest. Phil stripped Clint gently of his jacket and t-shirt, and carefully rubbed the rest of the feeling back into his arms. 

By the time he had finished, Clint was half-asleep in his arms. Phil smiled softly, and guided Clint down onto the bed to loosen his pants and slip them off. His boxers and socks followed, and Clint wanted to be more awake to appreciate this. But Phil ghosted his hand over Clint’s hair, and Clint let himself be lulled into a doze on the hotel bed.

Phil disappeared for a while, and Clint would have been worried, but he knew with a hazy sort of sureness that Nat was close-by watching their back, and he could hear the tap running in the bathroom. Phil came back with a bowl of hot water and a washcloth, and set about rinsing Clint down.

Clint had his share of sponge-baths, usually in S.H.I.E.L.D.’s medical bay after an op gone bad, but he had never been washed as gently or as thoroughly as this. Phil emptied and refilled the water three times, carefully cleaning every patch of skin, from the centre of his forehead to the space between his toes. It was like a washcloth version of Natasha’s tender shower care, only more intimate. Or rather, it was intimate in a different way. 

Clint and Nat were the job, and they treated their bodies like tools. Phil handled him like something precious, something to be cherished.

It felt … nice.

Clint was mostly asleep by the time he had finished. He tried to stay awake, to memorize the feel of Phil’s hands on him, but every whisper of the washcloth only pulled him further under into the haze of sleep.

Dimly, Clint felt Phil ghost one last hand over his chest. He rolled Clint a little in bed, removing the towel he had placed underneath him, and tucking him under the covers. Phil literally _tucked_ the edges of the covers around him, which wasn’t anything Clint could remember someone doing for him before, and pulled the comforter up to his chin. 

Phil turned to move away after that, but Clint had enough energy left to snake a hand out from under the covers and grasp him lightly by the wrist. He tugged, too tired to make it forceful, but trying to be insistent anyway. Phil huffed out a breath that was somehow fond, and climbed over the comforter towards him. 

Phil spooned him behind, touching him lightly from on top of the covers, and it was simultaneously the most chaste and the most erotic thing Clint could imagine. But before he could get more than half-way hard and roll over to do something about it, sleep reached up and dragged him down into its sweet abyss.

 

~ ~ ~ 

 

Clint woke several hours later. He was vaguely aware that Phil had gotten up and left after about an hour or two. He had a hazy recollection of Phil’s hand sweeping gently across his forehead and a brief kiss on the tip of his nose. Clint still blinked at the rumpled covers beside him for a moment before turning to find Natasha in the doorway.

“Wheels up in ten,” she told him. 

Clint stared at her for a moment. The bedroom was dark but the light in the main room was on. Natasha, framed by the doorway, stood like a shadow. Her hair, lit from behind, seemed like it was on fire.

“Thank you,” he told her. It came out raw. Clint cleared his throat, but didn’t correct himself.

Nat smiled at him. It was a brief smile, but her eyes, framed by her hair, stayed warm. 

“Always,” she said, and turned and left.

Clint relaxed back on the bed for a moment, soaking in the heat and the feeling of absolute comfort there. Then, he grunted and swung his legs out of bed. He was still tired, it had to be about four or five a.m. judging by the light, but he felt refreshed enough to be moving under his own power. 

He also felt remarkably clean. Light, almost. Clint knew Phil had removed more than dirt with his bath last night. The feeling wasn’t going to last, it never did, but maybe Phil would be interested in repeating it on a more regular basis.

Clint thought of Phil’s tie around his arms last night, the look in his eyes when the medic had reached for him. And maybe he would be interested in a lot of things, once they got out of here.

His shoulders did feel a little sore this morning, but his hands and fingers were back to normal. Clint felt the bone-deep relief of that settle somewhere deep inside him. He knew he was more than a guy who could shoot things, but sometimes he needed to shoot things.

Clint dressed in the well-worn dark jeans and cotton top he dragged around for the end of every op. He left the light off, savouring the feeling of being in this room for as long as possible. Then he packed up the few things that had fallen out of his bag, hunted down the last of his socks, and opened the door. 

Jamisen, Kumar, Watson and Nat were all in the main room packing up equipment. Phil was by the window, his suit on and jacket buttoned, talking on his cell phone. He turned when Clint came out of the bedroom and his lips quirked up in the Coulson equivalent of a broad smile. Clint smiled back. 

Phil’s eyes crinkled, and his lips, if anything, twitched even higher. Then he turned back to his conversation, and Clint moved to help Kumar pack up the last of her computers.

They were on the road within minutes, driving to the small private airfield S.H.I.E.L.D. maintained in this part of the country. By the time they arrived, the Beta team had already assembled on tarmac. Woo caught Jamisen’s eye and started going over clean-up details. Kumar and Watson strapped the sensitive equipment down. Nat did the walk-around with Clint, another pair of eyes on a plane they hadn’t flown before, and settled next to him at the front of the plane. 

Phil walked on the plane last, finally putting his phone away as he climbed the short steps. He did a walk-around of his own, speaking to every member of the Alpha and Beta teams, if only for a moment, assuring them in his quiet way that things had gone well. 

He finished his circuit at the front of the plane, and Clint could feel Phil’s smile on the back of his neck as he bickered good-naturedly with Natasha. Clint had wanted to fly them home, but Nat argued that three hours of sleep did not a rested pilot make. Clint decided to regale her with his (often repeated) stories of places he had flown while bleeding, concussed, or running on thirty-six hours of no sleep. And on one, memorable occasion, all of the above.

Nat, usually content to let him ramble until he fell asleep on the plane, leaned over and whacked him softly on the back of his head. 

“I keep telling you, dumbass. That was before you had a team.”

The statement, delivered in Nat’s dry, argue-with-me-and-I’ll-hurt-you tone, brought Clint up short. He paused, mouth hanging comically open, and Phil huffed a laugh at him.

“What she said.”

Clint couldn’t help but smile as he shifted over on the seat, making room for Phil to sit beside him. He was pleasantly surprised when Phil did. He was even more surprised when Phil put a hand on his knee and left it there.

Clint smiled at him, knowing he was giving away too much, giving away everything. He couldn’t help it. Nat rolled her eyes, and Phil squeezed his thigh for a moment before releasing. 

From the back of the plane, Jamisen, Kumar, Woo and Watson – and the rest of the Beta team, all craning forward from the cargo area – paused for a moment and looked over at them. Then everyone smiled, the planed rumbled, and they shot forward on the tarmac. 

Phil left his hand where it was on Clint’s thigh. The entire way back.

 

 

The end.

**Author's Note:**

> **Warnings:**
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> Dubious consent  
> (all Clint/Coulson 100% consensual)  
> PTSD  
> Non-healthy coping mechanisms  
> Graphic depiction of vomiting  
> Brief mention of date-rape drugs (not used)  
> Threats of rape
> 
>    
> Please let me know if I've missed anything!
> 
>  
> 
>    
>  **Translations:**  
>     
> "чувствовать себя лучше?" (Russian) - Feeling better?
> 
> "gây phiền nhiễu" (Vietnamese) - annoying
> 
>  
> 
> **Easter Eggs:**  
>     
> The number 42 is used here a lot, because it makes my nerdy heart happy
> 
> Clint getting to drive a fire red mustang is a nod to Sirona and Ellievolia’s masterpiece “I will ask you to open my door from your side” found here: http://archiveofourown.org/works/404053 and which I liked despite the fact that people cheating (even peripherally) on their partner is one of my squicks
> 
> Clint offering to make Nat a peppermint schnapps is a reference to my husband’s favourite How I Met Your Mother episode 6x22, “The Perfect Cocktail”, in which the group mentions peppermint schnapps makes Barney turn into Richard Dawson, a game show host who apparently greets woman by kissing them on the mouth. In my head Clint and Nat had this ‘best friends 4 eva’ mission where they had to play a bisexual couple and Nat kissed a lot of pretty, pretty girls (he also likes to sing “I kissed a girl and I liked it” loudly when in the shower on missions, to Phil’s mocking adoration)
> 
> The idea of Tony being allergic to outdated tech is, I’m sure, scifigrl47’s. I just love the imagery. 
> 
> And twenty points to whoever spotted the Babylon Five reference. Because that show was awesome.


End file.
